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PRESIDENT W(X)DR()W WILSON 






IVoodrow Wilson 
and His Work 

By 
William E. Dodd 

Professor of American History in 
the University of Chicago 




Fourth and Revised 
Edition 



Garden City, N. Y., and Toronto 
Doubleday , Page & Company 
1921 






COPYRIGHT, 1920. 1921, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE <t COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED AT OAKDEN CITY, N. y., D. 8. A. 
THE COnN'TRY MFE PHESS 



DEC 29 1921 






^ 



TO 

M. J. D. 

WHOSE MANIFOLD PERSONAL SACRIFICES 
AND UNCEASING INTEREST HAVE ADDED 
SO MANY HOURS TO THE SUM OF THE 
TIME I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DEVOTE 
TO INVESTIGATION AND STUDY, THIS 
BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Youth and Early Envikonment ... 3 

II. The New Road to Leadership .... 24 

III. New Wine in Old Bottles 42 

IV. The Great Stage 60 

V. From Princeton to the Presidency , . 80 

VI. The Problem .106 

VII. The Great Reforms 124 

VIII. Wars and Rumours of Wars .... 146 

IX. The Election of 1916 170 

X. The United States Enters the War . 195 

XI. "We Are Provincials No Longer" . . 220 

XII. Roosevelt or Wilson 250 

XIII. The Great Adventure 277 

XIV. The Day of Reckoning 298 

XV. The Treaty and the League . ... . 828 

XVI. An Appeal to the Country 354 

XVII. Political Sabotage 378 

XVIII. The Breaking of Woodrow Wilson . . 410 

Index . . , , 439 



Vtt 



INTRODUCTORY 

[To the First Edition] 

THE career of President Wilson and his services to his 
country and to mankind in general are so well defined and 
fairly rounded out that historians may not long postpone 
their estimates of both the man and his work. The fears 
of some that early appraisals may not accord with the final 
verdict of history are not well grounded. The final verdict 
has not yet been pronounced upon Julius Csesar, and each 
generation of American scholars forms anew its opinion of 
outstanding figures like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham 
Lincoln. JeflFerson, whom half of articulate America jeered 
at during his last year in the presidency, was a political saint 
to Abraham Lincoln; and Lincoln, whom nearly all the leaders 
of both great political parties of July and August, 1864, urged 
to retire in humiliation from his second candidacy for the 
presidency, was and is a political saint to Woodrow Wilson. 
Violent attack and virulent abuse are not the criteria of his- 
tory. They but call attention sharply to the one attacked 
or abused, and create the presumption that something real is 
being done or attempted. 

No public man in all the country was more distrusted 
by the eminent the day that John Wilkes Booth did his 
deadly deed than Abraham Lincoln. If Lincoln had lived 
to try his philosophy of kindness in the reconstruction of the 
broken South, his fame might well have been very different 
from what it is. Accident had a great deal to do with what 
history says about Lincoln. Accident has already pro- 
foundly influenced the thinking of men about the present 



X INTRODUCTORY 

leader of the United States. He has himself said that ac- 
cident was responsible for his second election to the presi- 
dency, although he quickly added that this did not mean that 
the body of the plain people were alienated from him. There 
is nothing more adventitious than the judgments of history. 
Did not Washington's fame take a bizarre turn through the 
fictions of Parson Weems? Chief Justice Marshall had been 
in his grave nearly a hundred years before a worthy biography 
was even attempted. There is not to-day a good Life of 
Henry Clay. History is fickle if not a fiction, and one of the 
reasons for its shrewish character is the failure of scholars 
to take their problems and greater subjects in hand before 
too many of the pertinent materials are lost. A contempo- 
rary account of a great man or a great epoch, if made in the 
spirit of truth and justice, may set somewhat the form of 
future history; as indeed a false contemporary account may 
thwart or make difficult the later verdict. 

With a view to a just estimate of President W^ilson, the 
following chapters have been written. They are written 
while he lives and while his bitterest opponents occupy the 
centre of the public stage. If the account errs, it may be 
corrected, and thus be a means to a better understanding of 
the man and his services, a means even of an earlier historical 
portrait. As to the main facts, there can not be widely dif- 
fering judgments. They are still fresh in the minds of mil- 
lions of people. Of purposes and ideals, no man has ever 
spoken more plainly or written more accurately than Wood- 
row Wilson what he believed and what he thought the coun- 
try ought to adopt as its programme. 

As to details, those details and incidents that make so much 
of the unpurposed work of a great man, I have had some as- 
sistance from the President himself. Three or four times 
during his trying years in the White House he talked frankly 



INTRODUCTORY xi 

of the state of the world and of his high hopes for his country, 
for a better future for all men everywhere. No man could 
listen to him as I did and not be warmed, not be moved in 
behalf of his cause. Many of his hopes, doubtless, have 
failed of realization; many groups of men have surely been 
digging their own graves, unawares; and many have from 
purely personal motives sought to thwart him. All of this 
he realized; but it did not make a pessimist of the President. 
What was said in such conversations has not, of course, been 
quoted or even restated in my own words. But it did enable 
me to interpret and estimate public statements and public 
acts in ways that would otherwise have been impossible. 

Furthermore, in the prosecution of this work I have had the 
good fortune to come into close relations with Professor Stock- 
ton Axson, the brother of the first Mrs. Wilson, who has been 
intimate with the President since the days of his boyhood 
and who remains practically a member of the family circle 
at the White House. Professor Axson has related to me 
many incidents and facts of Wilson's home life and family 
connections, explained a number of things about the entrance 
of the President into New Jersey politics, and read and com- 
mented upon the larger part of the book in manuscript. For 
all of this I am deeply grateful. 

In similar manner Messrs. Cyrus H. McCormick, and 
Thomas D. Jones, both of Chicago, and others have given 
information about the Princeton presidency and the plans 
of Wilson, the educator. Secretaries Daniels and Houston 
explained the working relations of the President and mem- 
bers of the Cabinet, thus making plain matters that otherwise 
might have escaped me. For all such friendly assistance 
the thanks of the author are hereby cordially expressed. But 
all these sources are favourable and perhaps coloured by close 
personal relations. To rely wholly upon them would not be 



xii INTRODUCTORY 

historical. In order to get the other view, several members 
of both houses of Congress have been asked about Wilson and 
his administration. Republicans as well as Democrats were 
willing to talk, although it would be unfair to quote them or 
give their names. And as occasion offered men of standing 
in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago have been asked the 
reasons for their decided, sometimes bitter, hostility toward 
the President. 

From public men in Washington and from business men 
in the large cities one learns how earnest and deep-seated is 
the dislike of many of Wilson's opponents. It is a part of the 
purpose of this book to explain and interpret that dislike. 
Some of the maneuvers of irreconcilable political enemies, 
of which I have learned, can not properly be given to the 
public, although the knowledge of them has been invaluable 
in the interpretation of certain events. Of course unfriendly 
sources of information have been used with much caution; 
but it has seemed proper to ascertain, as nearly as possible, 
what men think is their grievance against a leader whose 
popularity transcends all national boundaries and most 
racial and party differences. I can not hope to have under- 
stood all the motives and forces that have played upon the 
Wliite House these last seven years; but it does seem that the 
picture ought to be better for the patient listening to men and 
women who regard Wilson in much the same way that Thad- 
deus Stevens and Charles Sumner regarded Lincoln. 

The materials that have yielded the larger part of the in- 
formation necessary to this story are the speeches of the 
President delivered before Congress and other audiences. 
These Mr. Joseph P. Tumulty has kindly gathered and for- 
warded for my use from time to time. The Congressional 
Record, in spite of its profuseness, remains the great authority 
for the proceedings of the two houses of the national Leg- 



INTRODUCTORY xiii 

islature. Of similar importance are the various reports and 
hearings of committees of Congress. What the public thinks 
can not well be ascertained even from the electoral returns, 
as recorded in Edward Stanwood's valuable "History of the 
Presidency." Nor may one rely implicitly upon the press, 
either daily or periodical, for these are all more or less coloured 
by personal or group interests. But, as will be seen from the 
footnotes to my pages, much assistance has been gained 
from the New York Times, the Springfield Republican, and 
certain other well-known newspapers. The Literary Digest 
has been frequently cited because it is a gleaner of press 
opinion from all parts of the country. But it ought to be 
said that its work would be much more satisfactory to his- 
torians if it gave the dates of its press excerpts. 

Of books bearing upon recent events, the histories of the 
time, biographies of leading figures and the various forms of 
propaganda that have so burdened the mail pouches of the 
world due use has been made, as will appear, I trust, from the 
frequent references that accompany every chapter. But 
I have not undertaken to exhaust this source of knowledge. 
Only where Wilson was the subject in a serious way, where 
reputable scholars had something to say in either foreign or 
domestic periodicals, and where more or less scientific effort 
was made in books or pamphlets to treat subjects germane 
to the inquiry, has there been an effort to be exhaustive. 
Because the subject is contemporary and the sources of in- 
formation are well-nigh infinite, no bibliography has been 
appended. The references to sources which accompany the 
text on almost every page must suffice to show the range 
of my study. But it must not be supposed that every 
authority consulted has been duly listed. 

It is a pleasure to express my thanks to my colleagues, 
Messrs. A. C. McLaughlin, Charles E. Merriam, Conyers 



xiv INTRODUCTORY 

Read, and Ferdinand Schevill for reading parts or all of the 
manuscript or proof of this book, and for giving it the benefit 
of their criticism. This is not to say that any or all of these 
gentlemen agree with the social philosophy or the interpreta- 
tion which run through the book, nor to claim immunity from 
criticism because of their supposed acquiescence in the 
validity of the narrative. It is to express the gratitude of 
the author for a kind of assistance that is often irksome. In 
a special sense I wish here to record my thanks to Professor 
Albert H. Tolman, likewise of the University of Chicago, for 
a careful reading of the proof and for many valuable sugges- 
tions as to form and style. 

It remains to be said that this portrait of Woodrow Wilson 
is designed to be a brief history of recent times as well as a 
chronicle of a great career. It aims to set the man in his 
historical background and to explain the trend of American 
life during a momentous period of world history. And since 
there are many and violently hostile views of recent history, 
it is hoped that readers will consider well the facts and the 
alternative interpretations before they take offence at what 
is here set down. I can not hope that all historians will 
agree with my interpretations, for historians are partisans 
like the rest of mankind. My chief hope is that some mis- 
informed people may come to a saner view of Woodrow 
Wilson and a more historical interest in the development of 
our country along liberal lines. If that should be attained 
the author will consider himself amply repaid for the two 
years, and more of labour consumed in the making of this book. 

William E. Dodd. 
University of Chicago, 
February 12, 1920. 



WOODROW WILSON 

AND 

HIS WORK 



Woodrow Wilson and His Work 

CHAPTER I 
YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 

FEW Americans have had a better hneage than Woodrow 
Wilson, !28th president of the United States. His father, 
Joseph Ruggles Wilson, born at Steubenville, Ohio, was the 
tenth child of James Wilson, and his wife, from County 
Down, Ireland, and of the sturdy Scotch race which still 
troubles the international waters in more ways than one. 
The life of James Wilson and his big family was of that hard 
but wholesome kind which has imparted so much vigour to 
the whole body of the American national experience. 

Joseph R. Wilson early showed a bent for books and con- 
sequently he was sent to Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, 
where he graduated in 1844. After a year of teaching in a 
Presbyterian school, he went to a theological seminary at 
Alleghany, Pennsylvania, to prepare for the Presbyterian 
ministry. In 1847 he went to Princeton for another year of 
preparation for his chosen calling. But on his return to 
Steubenville, he again became a teacher, this time in the 
Steubenville Male Academy, as men were then wont to call 
a school for boys. Here he met Janet Woodrow, a beau- 
tiful young woman, likewise of Scotch parentage, and a 
student in a school for girls conducted by Doctor Beattie, 
another Scotchman turned pedagogue in the backwoods of 
America. 

3 



4 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Janet Woodrow was the daughter of Thomas Woodrow, 
graduate of the University of Glasgow, and his wife, a Scotch 
woman of similar strain who had died on the long journey to 
"the States." After a year of missionary work in Canada, 
the Woodrows settled in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1837, where the 
head of the house was the pastor of the Presbyterian Church 
till 1849, when he moved to Columbus to become the minister 
of the Hogg Presbyterian Church. Thomas Woodrow was 
already a man of note in Ohio, a devotee of the ancient 
classics who felt every day poorly spent which did not take 
him through many pages of the Greek and Latin writers 
which adorned the shelves of his library. He was likewise a 
firm believer in that stern Calvinist philosophy of which John 
Knox had been the best British exponent. His religion, 
duly burrowed from ancient Greek books and seasoned with 
the precepts of the Genevan theology, made something more 
than the mere milk for babes of which we learn in Holy Writ. 
There was no mistaking the intellectual calibre and the 
sturdy character of the stocky, full-bearded man who pre- 
sided with easy dignity over the church at Chillicothe, and 
then for many years at Columbus. 

It was his daughter, the fifth child in a family of seven, 
whom young Joseph Wilson met at Steubenville. They 
were married in June, 1849, and two weeks later this daughter 
of a great preacher was the wife of another preacher, for her 
husband was ordained the following month by the Presbytery 
of Ohio. The young couple did not enter at once the manse 
of some western church; they went instead for a short time 
to Jefferson College, where Wilson was professor of rhetoric, 
whence they moved again to Hampden Sidney College, Vir- 
ginia. There Joseph Wilson served the Church for four 
years as professor of chemistry and natural science, preach- 
ing the while to neighbouring congregations that asked his 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 5 

ministrations. In 1855 he became the settled minister of the 
Presbyterian Church in Staunton, Virginia. There on 
December 28, 1856, a son was born to the family whom they 
called Thomas Woodrow, in honour of the grandfather at 
Columbus.^ 

But the family moved once more before they took root 
in the earth. In the spring 1858, Reverend Joseph R. Wilson 
became the minister of the Presbyterian Church of Augusta, 
Georgia, and there he remained through the succeeding 
stormy years till 1870 when he went to the well-known 
Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina, as pro- 
fessor of pastoral and evangelistic theology. 

The Wilsons were soon at home in Georgia and South 
Carolina, for the people of Augusta and Columbia formed one 
community. There the beloved Doctor Thomas Woodrow, 
as he was now called, visited them and held aloft the stand- 
ard of learning. To the neighbouring Oglethorpe College, 
Georgia, came Mrs. W'ilson's brother. Doctor James Wood- 
row, a distinguished graduate of the University of Heidel- 
berg, although he, too, was soon transferred to the Seminary 
at Columbia where he long tried in vain to reconcile dogmatic 
theology and natural science. Still another member of the 
old Chillicothe circle. Miss Marion Woodrow, visited her 
sister at Augusta, married James Bones, merchant and slave- 
holder, and became identified with the old South.' 

It was a unique community, that of Augusta and the coun- 
try round about in 1860. There nearly all men of note were 
the owners of slaves. There society was sharply articulated. 
The aristocracy, composed of planters of the country side 
and the older merchants of the towns, were quite as sure of 



'William Bayarrf Safe, -"Woodrow Wilson, the SUry of his Life," New York, 1913. 
'For character sketches of Southern Presbyterian leaders see Henry Alexander Whit« 
'Southern Presbyterian Leaders, "New Yorlc, IQU. 



6 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK, 

their positions in the world as were the gentry of Britain with 
whom the Woodrows had had sympathetic experience be- 
fore emigrating to America. The farmers and mechanics 
made another class, not so sharply set off as were their 
brethren in England, but none the less a class apart. And 
the Negroes and poor whites quarrelled among themselves 
as to which group was entitled to social precedence.^ That 
the Wilsons readily adapted themselves to the system as they 
found it is evidenced by their long residence in the region as 
well as their undoubted social and professional success. They 
became as good Southerners as if they had been to the man- 
ner born. 

The home of the Wilsons in Augusta was for the time a 
stately house fronting on one of the best streets. Its rooms 
were large and its halls high and wide; and there was ample 
space about the place to give that dignity of which Lowell 
speaks when he said every home should have "fifty feet of 
self-respect" between it and the public highway. As was 
common everywhere in the old South, there were trees in 
abundance, a stable for the horses, and walls of brick to keep 
out prying eyes. 

Moreover, the church across the street was the handsomest 
in the town and its congregation the richest. That, too, was 
a dignified structure surrounded by tall elms and oaks, and 
permeated with an atmosphere that suggested sacred things 
and rather tamed the spirits of men as they came within its 
walls. Its quiet family pews, long, carpeted aisles, high 
ceiling, great suspended chandeliers, and pillared galleries 
for the slaves made upon men's minds that wholesome im- 
pression which Doctor Wilson, both in presence and stately 
speech, strongly reenforced in his sermons. In the manse, 

'For description of life in the South, see the author's "Cotton Kingdom" in Ths Chron- 
icle* of America, New York, 1919. 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 7 

on the shaded streets, and about the coves and corners of the 
church young Wilson found his playground, and got those 
early inspirations which are of the very essence of life. 

The Wilson family circle was of that sober, even stern 
character so common to the South in those marvellous days 
which preceded her great war for independence. Morning 
and evening there were Bible readings and family prayers 
which all were prompt to attend. On Saturdays there was a 
stillness which presaged the Holy Sabbath itself, for the 
father was preparing and meditating upon the two sermons 
for the next day; and Mondays partook of Sundays because 
they were the so-called "blue days" familiar to every 
preacher. 

To men of Doctor Wilson's creed all mankind, save the 
elect of God, dwelt in outer darkness or moved irresistibly 
upon that downward road which led to the lake of everlasting 
fire and brimstone. It was the preacher's appointed business 
to warn such as the Great Father might have ordained from 
the foundation of the world as partakers of the covenant and 
heirs of that kingdom of heaven whose antechamber was the 
Church militant. God was to the Presbyterian a monarch 
of indescribable majesty and inscrutable will whose son, 
Jesus of Nazareth, had been sent into the world to explain 
and propitiate. 

Doctor Wilson was himself a fit representative of that 
deity which he preached from Sabbath to Sabbath. He was 
tall, symmetrical, and good to look upon as became the ser- 
vants of God; not a man whom one would pass unnoted in the 
street, nor one who might be approached with familiarity. 
He was profoundly concerned lest his own children, of whom 
there were two girls and two boys, might prove to be of that 
unsaved mass of mankind to whom the grace of God did not 
extend; and he doubtless watched, as they grew to ma- 



8 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

turity, for signs that Heaven would yet open its portals to 
them, yet he was withal a gentle and warm-hearted man, 
a believer in the value of human leadership and suggestion 
as well as in the stern will of God handed down through the 
ages. It was an earnest little world, that Wilson home in 
which our hero first learned the ways of life.^ Saturdays, 
Sundays, and Mondays of every week were filled with the 
presence of the Presbyterian deity, and on other days of the 
week members of the family unfailingly approached in prayer 
and song the throne of Almighty God, led by the father in 
that spirit of old which would not let go "till he obtained the 
blessing." To them all, as to most religious-minded Amer- 
icans of that time, the world was a vale of tears, a place of 
preparation, in sweat and blood, for that other world to which 
all must surely go. During those days of growing orthodoxy 
in the South people generally conceived of Satan as an active 
moving spirit whom one must fight through a resolute faith 
or circumvent by propitiating the angry Jehovah.^ 

Bowed down beneath a load of sin. 

By Satan sorely pressed; 
By wars without and fears within, 

I come to Thee for rest. 

While the home held true to the ancient faith and the 
parents endeavoured to bring their children into touch with 
the divine order of things, there was a larger influence of the 
church which played upon the life of the young boy who was 
to mean so much to a war-torn world of a later day. The 



^Conversation with Mrs. Jessie B. Brower, Winnetka, LI., December '21, 1918. Mrs. 
Brewer is a cousin of Woodrow Wilson who hved near him during his early years. 

•One of the commonly used hymns, taken from the Presbyterian Hymn:il of 1868, p. 96. 
In preparing this sketch of Dr. Wilson the author has consulted two members of the family 
circle, and he has made a careful study of the books, hymnals, and correspondence of lead- 
ing preachers of the time. 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 9 

American Presbyterian Church of 1860 was a very powerful 
organization. It was wholly under the control of its South- 
ern leaders. The prince of them all was Doctor James H. 
Thornwell of the Columbia Theological Seminary who was to 
the religious world of the old South what Calhoun had been 
to the political. He was an aristocrat of the very best type 
and a champion of slavery and the cause of secession. A 
much younger man, but a powerful one, was Benjamin Mor- 
gan Palmer of New Orleans who preached on Thanksgiving, 
1860, one of the remarkable sermons of American history in 
which he declared that God had made it the duty of the South 
to maintain and spread over the continent the whole Southern 
social system, including African slavery.^ Another leader of 
whom the world knows little to-day, Doctor John B. Adger, 
professor of church history and polity at Columbia and 
translator of the Bible into the Armenian tongue, was a 
master spirit in the religious world. North as well as South. 
There were many others whose names were known to the 
country in 1860, but there is not space here to enumerate 
them. 

When the Civil War came and the Presbyterian Church 
could no longer remain non-committal on the slavery issue, 
separation was inevitable. Consequently, the leaders whose 
names I have mentioned and many others from all the seceded 
states gathered in Doctor Wilson's church at Augusta to 
organize the Southern Presbyterian Church. Thornwell, 
Palmer, Hoge of Virginia, and Adger made the Wilson home 
their headquarters and there caucused as to what was best to 
do, what was the best machinery for their work. Among 
these princes of the church, young Woodrow Wilson began 
to envisage the world. They were his father's intimate 

iWilliam Gary Johnston, "The Life and Letters"©! Benjamin Morgan Palmer." '?06, Rich- 
raond, 1006. 



10 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

friends. And the father was elected stated clerk of the 
Southern Presbyterian Assembly in 1865. 

When Thornwell died in 1862 the Wilson family felt 
the blow as a personal calamity, as indeed did most men 
of the South where he was as well known as Henry Ward 
Beecher in the North. For three of the four war years 
Doctor Palmer, a refugee from New Orleans, was professor 
of pastoral theology at Columbia; and then, after a short 
interim. Doctor Wilson went to Columbia to take the place 
made famous by two of the greatest preachers the old 
South ever produced. Thus Woodrow Wilson's boyhood to 
the day when he went away to college was passed in in- 
timate touch with the great ones of his father's church. 

Of the school life of the boy not very much is to be said. 
The father was the best and constant teacher, although Pro- 
fessor Joseph T. Derry did conducta boys' school in Augusta 
where Woodrow Wilson, Joseph Lamar, and other sons of the 
gentry received instruction in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. 
And again in Columbia he spent the better part of three years 
in the school of Professor Charles Hey ward Barnwell, a 
member of one of the old families of Carolina. In the home 
Cooper's sea and forest tales were read and acted in boyish 
dramas. Scott and Dickens, too, had their places in the 
household entertainment; nor may one doubt that Shake- 
speare stood ever ready upon the Wilson shelves. But when 
all is said Wilson's father was the veritable leader and maker 
of the future president. 

That Wilson received the best of training in home, church, 
and school, will not be doubted. Yet there was a subtler in- 
fluence that surely made itself felt if not dominant in his early 
thinking. The South was in the throes of war and suffering 
during all his early life. He saw the soldiers go away to 
Virginia to fight the invading Yankees; he witnessed the 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 11 

numerous burials of the later terrible war years; and he 
saw the busy industrial life of the town devoted to the 
making of guns and ammunition for the armies of Lee. 
And when the end drew near, he felt and understood the 
imminent peril of Sherman's march, which barely missed 
the town. 

As if this were not enough for a delicate' and sensitive 
nature, he saw Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens pass 
through Augusta under heavy Federal guard on their way to 
their dreaded prisons in the North. And he tells us himself 
that as a boy he stood by the side of Robert E. Lee and looked 
admiringly into the great man's face.^ Thorn well and Lee, 
two great noblemen! These ideal leaders of the boyhood 
days mark the beginning of the man. Wilson was a South- 
erner, pure and simple. The appeal of the years of trial, the 
influence of men around him, the poverty of that reconstruc- 
tion South which is only half known to history and the gentle 
ways of the folk he knew made him heart and soul one of 
the people who were later to make him president. 

There is something pathetic about those gentle and simple 
folk of Georgia and South Carolina in the days of Wilson's 
boyhood, the period of 1865 to 1876. They had fought the 
great fight; their churchyards were filled with their dead 
heroes; the wealth that had once proclaimed them the rich 
and the envied of the United States had gone up in smoke; 
and their former slaves sat in the seats of Calhoun and Ste- 
phens and Jefferson Davis, making laws for proud common- 
wealths and equalizing the fortunes of the people. Sixteen 
blocks of Columbia's best homes were little more than waste 
land when young Wilson attended Mr. Barnwell's school and 
when his father taught pastoral theology to the young 



>Aii addre^ delivered at the University of North Carolina, January 19, 1909. University of 
Sorti Carolina Rtcord. No. 73, pp. i-il. 



n WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

preachers of the impoverished South. Whatever men may 
say of the righteous character of our American Civil War. 
brave men can never look with aught but shame upon the 
policy of the Government which outraged the helpless and 
sought to wreak vengeance upon a beaten people.^ 

The difficulty with war as a policy is that it cannot con- 
quer the spirits of men; and the older men of the South to- 
day, fifty years after the surrender of Lee, still think of 
the North as a hostile section bent on exploitation of the rest 
of the country. With such ideas deeply implanted in his 
mind and saturated with the traditional history of his section, 
young Woodrow Wilson, lean-looking and rather overgroT\Ti, 
went away, in 1874, for the first time to college. It was to 
Davidson College in the foothills of the North Carolina 
mountains, a pleasant place, an old school founded by the 
followers of good Doctor Witherspoon of Princeton and still 
under the strictest Presbyterian control. The professors 
were all staunch believers in the Genevan reformer and the 
students were chips off old Presbyterian blocks. It was also 
quite as Southern in character as General D. H. Hill, one of 
its patrons, could have wished. There was little chance 
that a Christian boy or a Southern youth could go wrong 
there. 

Nor did Woodrow Wilson try to go wrong. He con- 
ned his classics, mathematics, and philosophy, sacred and 
profane, after the manner of his now departed grandfather, 
Thomas Woodrow. There were firewood to chop and water 
to bring; rooms to set to rights and college debating societies 
to attend. And he attended to all these things. Baseball, 
too, had a pull for him and he loved a race. But his health 
was none too robust and doubtless the fare at the country 
boarding places was not quite to his way of living. His waft a 

»E. p. Oberholtser, "History of the United SUtes," Chapter 11. 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 13 

nervous nature and he broke under the strain. In the spring 
of 1875 he returned to his father's roof, now the Presbyterian 
manse in Wilmington, North CaroHna, whither the theo- 
logian of Columbia had meanwhile retreated in order to take 
up the work of pastor again. 

In Wilmington there were interesting things for a boy, the 
long wharf where great ships loaded for foreign parts, where 
sailors told marvellous stories of pirates, long since dead, 
that used to sail into the harbours and rob the king's ships be- 
fore they left their moorings; of the terrible battles between 
Yankees and rebels for the control of the place, and of bold 
blockade runners who used to feed guns and clothing and 
shells to the Confederate armies in Virginia. Altogether it 
was a great place for a dreamy young man who had never 
seen the ocean; but Wilson did more than listen to sea tales 
and garner war stories.^ 

He spent a year in Wilmington making up his mind what 
to do next and reading serious books that had already be- 
come his passion. He had already commenced to take an 
interest in British politics and to admire William E. Glad- 
stone, almost an ideal statesman to him. It was plain that 
he must go to college again. And in September, 1875, he took 
the Wilmington and Weldon train for Washington and 
thence to Princeton where his father had been a student 
and where he was to spend a great part of his life. 

It was as natural for Wilson to go to Princeton as it is for 
young English gentlemen to go to Oxford. It was an old in- 
stitution founded before the middle of the eighteenth century, 
a school of the prophets for the South and West for more than 
a hundred years. Thence had come Davies and Stanhope 
Smith, Moses Waddell and later Robert Breckinridge. There 

'President Wilson has said since these lines were written that he was almost led to enter 
upon the life of a seaman while at Wilmington. 



14 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Thornwell and Adger had studied, and the great Edwards 
for a short time had taught things fit for the gods to con- 
template. There James Madison had been a student, and 
senators and judges of the United States had learned the ways 
of government. 

Moreover, his father's teacher, the famous Doctor Charles 
Hodge, was still there. The Alexanders, so well known to 
every Presbyterian in the country, and J. S. Hart, the maker 
of books and founder of the Sunday School Times, and Joseph 
Henry, famous for experiments in physics, not to mention 
the great Doctor McCosh, philosopher and president of the 
College, all drew a young man like Wilson who leaned upon 
his father for counsel and kept in touch with the world which 
his father knew best.^ 

Nor can there be doubt that the boy was welcome. He 
came from good old stock. He was nearly twenty years old 
and mature for his years; in fact, Woodrow Wilson, like 
Thomas Jefferson, was never immature; he took promptly 
to his books if indeed it can be said that he ever left them. 

There was little opportunity to do anything else. The 
atmosphere at Princeton was not unlike that of Davidson. 
The professors were all of the earnest character of Christian 
ministers. There were prayers every morning to which the 
boys must contribute their presence; the sermons and the 
revivals made it clear that to go astray must be the purpose, 
not a mere slip of the student; and the boys were of the same 
social stratum with their teachers, coming as they did, in the 
main, from earnest Presbyterian homes, sons themselves of 
ministers and laymen of the Church.- 

Of the formal side of Woodrow Wilson's training at 



'"Catalogue of all Who Have Held Offic-e in or Have Received Degrees from theColiegeol 
New Jersey," Princeton University Press, 1896. 
'"Princeton," by Varuum Lansing Collins, New York, 1914, Chapters V and VI. 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 15 

Princeton little more need be said than that he gave sufficient 
attention to the classics, to mathematics, and the budding 
sciences to satisfy his teachers. He did not distinguish 
himself; perhaps his mind was not so evenly set as to enable 
him to "carry" all his classes with high distinction. Perhaps 
he did not feel the need of the endless round of the ancient 
quadrivium and its modern annexes. Admirable as had been 
his grandfather's learning and the evenness of the father's 
accomplishments, Wilson was a young man who stood upon 
his own feet. Wlien he graduated he ranked forty-one in a 
class of a hundred and twenty-two, which meant that he 
barely attained "honours." 

Of more importance perhaps is the record which Wil- 
son made in the Whig Hall, a literary and debating soci- 
ety into which Southern students generally drifted. It 
was in this organization that a young man showed his 
mettle, his initiative. On more than one occasion he led in 
the competition for honours, the most notable of which was 
his unprecedented conduct when he was appointed as one of 
the representatives of his society to debate with represent- 
atives of the rival society for the award of a coveted prize. 
The custom was to have the subject submitted to the debaters 
at the beginning of the contest. Sides were determined 
by lot. On this occasion it fell to the lot of Wilson to defend 
the protective tariff as against the principle of free trade. He 
flatly declined the contest, preferring to have his society lose 
the prize and himself the highest honour of his college 
course to defending what he considered an immoral thing. 

Like Emerson at Harvard, many years before, Wilson 
was^not a little disposed to academic anarchy. He loved 
tlie library more than he did the professors' lecture rooms; 
and he sought to try his own powers as a writer rather than to 
sharpen his wits by painful exercise in grammar and rhetoric. 



1« WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

He had already studied British pubUc men before he left 
home. Now he published a sketch of Prince Bismarck, the 
German chancellor, in which he manifested the usual Amer- 
ican tendency of those years to applaud things German, al- 
though he did not fail to point out the dangers of autocratic 
and unscrupulous methods. In better form was a study of 
Chatham which closed with the remark of Macaulay, I be- 
lieve, that "William Pitt was a noble statesman, the earl of 
Chatham a noble ruin." 

These and other articles, which show more than mere 
undergraduate abilities, appeared in the Nassau Literary 
Magazine, a students' periodical of recognized merit. But 
another interest was that of the growing department of 
athletics, as that division of college activity soon came to be 
called. In this he won a place on baseball teams and became 
student director of athletic sports. Close akin to this was 
his elevation by his fellows to the editorial management of a 
new student publication known as The Princetonian, a bi- 
weekly devoted to the news of the campus. 

There were no upper class clubs then at Princeton, in the 
sense at least of later years, but Wilson did eat with the 
"Alligators," a group of similar spirits, and he "chummed" 
with men of his own tastes; and perhaps idled just a bit; 
but his greater interest in his articles for the college journals, 
his part in the management of athletics, and his incursions 
into the field of British politics saved him from the loiter- 
ing good-fellow habit that was soon to lead many Prince- 
ton men into the exclusive club life of 1900. 

The best fruit of his earnest studies outside the curriculum 
was seen in a work of his senior year — an article pubhshed in 
the International Revieio of 1879. In this first mature out- 
put of his mind one sees the germ of his later political re- 
forms in the United States. It has been rare that a young 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 17 

man of twenty-three, and still in college, has been able to 
subject his own government to a scrutiny as objective and 
scientific in method as Wilson did that of the United States. 
Possibly his Southern training and aloofness from all things 
national was a factor, or was it his British descent? 

At any rate, he made an analysis of the method and pro- 
cedure of Congress in which the secret committee system was 
unerringly pointed to as a fruitful source of the shameless 
scandals of the time.^ Instead of ranting at the facts and the 
ruthless exploitation of the people by the people's chosen 
representatives, he uncovered the cause — the absence of re- 
sponsible leadership and the failure to apply open methods in 
laying tariffs and fixing taxes. The article in the Interna- 
tional was an indictment of congressional government and a 
vindication of the British system. It was Wilson's fare- 
well to undergraduate life; it was his debut into the world of 
scholarship, although he was hardly aware of the fact. He 
was a man without knowing it. 

From Princeton he went to the University of Virginia to 
study law under the famous John Minor. There again he 
joined one of the debating societies, the Jeffersonian, and 
distinctly avowed himself a Democrat in the act. He 
wrote for the University Magazine, as he had done at Prince- 
ton, and he defended the impopular cause of the Roman 
church in the United States, not an easy thing for the son and 
grandson of Scotch Presbyterian preachers to do. But Glad- 
stone and John Bright still occupied his attention and he 
pubUshed studies of them at Virginia. 

But the law was Wilson's business, and Doctor John Minor, 
his teacher, was a hard taskmaster. Nearly a year Wilson 



•One does well here to read and compare Roosevelt's first book, "The Naval War of 1818," 
188S| for the chasm-wide difference in points of view of these greatest of American leaders of our 
thne. 



18 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

studied as he had never studied at Princeton, and he was 
apparently on the way to success as a candidate for a law de- 
gree when indigestion overtook him and he left the University 
for home. He remained in Wilmington for a considerable 
time nursing his health and reading in that discursive manner 
which had already become a habit with him. Too old to 
continue under his father's roof much longer and drawn to- 
ward a public career, he knew no better than hastily to finish 
his preliminary studies in law, take his degree at the Univer- 
sity, and run away to some town to try his luck.^ 

He went to Atlanta in May, 1882, with his license in his 
pocket and, finding another young aspirant at hand, formed 
a partnership. The sign read "Renick and Wilson, Attor- 
neys at Law," and it was hung out at 48 Marietta Street. 
This location in Atlanta was another of those evidences of 
Wilson's attachments; he was a Georgian, like his father and 
many others of his kindred. Atlanta was, therefore, the 
place for him to begin. Still, practice and distinction and 
wealth were not apt to come to a young lawyer who did not 
stick to the law above everything else. And that Wilson 
could not do. 

He knew the use of the pen too well. And the idea of that 
article in the International still haunted him. He could not 
help elaborating it during the long hours when litigants kept 
vigilantly away from his doors and other young men like 
Hoke Smith enjoyed thedistinctionof baiting corporations and 
fighting spectacular cases through the courts.- There can 
be no doubt that Wilson was approaching mature manhood 
without great promise of that success and distinction which 
had been the rule with his immediate forebears. 



'WUliaiu Bayard Hale, " Woodrow Wilson, the Story of h'la Life," Chapter V. 
'A luemtMa- uf the Senate sayn that Wil^^ii and Iloke Smith came into unfriendly relations 
IM Ummc early daya in Atlanta. 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 19 

To relieve the ennui of an empty office and the tedium of 
constant writing upon a book which would probably never 
reach the distinction of print, to say nothing of winning 
royalties for its author, the young lawyer made long visits 
to his cousin, Mrs. Jessie Bones Brower, who now lived at 
Rome, Georgia. It was his nearest approach to home that 
was available. There he renewed an earlier acquaintance with 
Miss Ellen Axson, daughter of another Presbyterian church- 
man. Miss Axson was then living with her parents in Rome. 
Wilson very soon learned that she had charms for him which 
he should never be able to resist. Before many renewals of 
the acquaintance he asked and received her approval of 
marriage, at the first convenient season, for everybody knew 
that the bridegroom-to-be had no means of supporting a 
family. Doubtless this romance brought Wilson's affairs to 
a crisis. The firm of Renick and Wilson must be dissolved. 

Before we note the next step in Wilson's career, reference 
must be made to a characteristic declaration of positive op- 
position to the policy and practice of his government. The 
tariff that followed the American Civil War was one of econo- 
mic exploitation pure and simple; and as the expenses of the 
struggle declined it was raised not as a matter of taxation, 
but to protect American industries from competition of every 
sort. In 1872 the Southern and Western elements of the 
country returned to Congress such a majority opposed to the 
Republican tariff policy that the subject became again a 
sharp issue. By a narrow margin, however, the Republicans 
had saved to themselves the presidency both in 1876 and in 
1880. Still Southern and Western men clamoured for down- 
ward revision of the tariff, and in 1882 a congressional com- 
mission was sent over the country to take testimony on the 
subject. 

Wilson went before the body and gave an undoubted pro- 



20 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

fession of faith. He opposed the tarifiP: "Now that peace 
has come, the people of the South will insist upon having the 
fruits of peace and not being kept down under the burdens 
of war." He went on to show the unwisdom of laying any 
tax except for urgent needs; a tax laid for other purposes is 
bad policy and class legislation. Still, he would not abandon 
tariffs for revenue. ^ The people had too long been accus- 
tomed to indirect taxation. This was a pronouncement in 
full accord with his sectional faith as well as with the results 
of his long studies of British public affairs. Nine of every 
ten men in the South held the same view and longed for the 
day when they could compel the industrial interests of the 
North to take better care of themselves and take less direct 
or indirect aid from the treasury. 

The time had come for Wilson to try another calliag. It 
was plain that the law was not for him. He went to the 
new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in September, 
1883, and there once more renewed formally his contact with 
learning. His ideas for a treatise on congressional govern- 
ment, developing the thought of the article of 1879, were still 
in mind. He put himself under the guidance of Professor 
Herbert B. Adams, one of the most stimulating teachers 
known to American educational history. There were other 
young men of similar minds at the new university, James 
Franklin Jameson, Albert Shaw, Frederic J. Turner, Albion 
W. Small, John Dewey, and others of whom the world has 
heard a great deal. No more remarkable group of stu- 
dents than those who worked with Adams in his earlier 
years at Johns Hopkins has appeared in our history. 

Adams had come but recently from Germany where he had 
been imbued with the best spirit of that country. The new 

'" Rpporl of the Tariff Commission," House "Miscellaneous Reports" 2nd Sess. 47Ui Cong., 
Vol. Ill, WU<. 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 21 

university had for its president Daniel Coit Gilman, an- 
other man who was overcome with the sense of the American 
need for accurate scholarship and first-hand research. The 
seminar was the method. There were no residential halls 
and what is called college spirit hardly existed. Only the 
spirit of research prevailed. Under such a regime, Wilson 
must have found benefit, even if he had not already failed at 
law and felt the instant need of things. Within two years, 
he had met the conditions for the doctorate although he w^as 
not desirous of actually receiving the Ph.D. degree, and his 
study soon to be known as "Congressional Government" 
was accepted.^ 

It was his real debut into the world of scholarship and a re- 
markable book indeed it was for a young man of twenty- 
nine. It was the idea of 1879 developed to its logical con- 
clusions. Its plea was that congressional government was in 
a sad state, that only positive reform in the way of respon- 
sible leadership could save it. But if it were saved it would 
not be congressional government; it would be cabinet govern- 
ment after the British model. Although the book was ex- 
ceedingly well done, entirely independent in thinking, and 
written in a style that might save many another dissertation 
of infinitely less value, the author had not after all drawn the 
conclusion to which his study pointed. 

If direct and open responsibility for the policies of demo- 
cratic government be absolutely necessary, then the elabo- 
rate scheme of checks and balances set up by the fathers 
of 1787, designed to prevent things from being done rather 
than to forward things that needed to be done, must go. 
If the president must shape and guide legislation and stand 

'Woodrow Wilson, " Con.i;ressional Government," Boston, 1885. Professor Stockton Axson 
informs the writer that Wilson did not expect to apply for the doctorate. It was the interest 
taken by Miss Thomas, then dean of Bryn Mawr College, that induced him to take the er. 
amination and receive the degree. 



^2 ^YOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

or fall with the people according to the measure of suc- 
cess attained, then the shirking of responsibility through 
division of authority, house, senate, and supreme court, must 
cease. That would be democracy such as the English were 
already approaching and such as the American system was 
daily defeating. 

But to this radical, if logical conclusion, young Wilson, 
aristocratic and conservative as he was, did not think of pro- 
ceeding. He had made his contribution ; he was ready for the 
next turn in his career and he took it, leaving to the political 
doctors to determine what reforms should be applied to the 
rickety Federal system in Washington. His book was well 
received by all the critics; it went through many editions 
during the next decades, but there is no sign that any con- 
gressman ever read it. Certainly none ever took serious note 
of it till nearly thirty years later when the author sat in the 
White House and men began to cast about to learn what 
manner of man the new President w^as. 

It was not long before opportunities came to the author of 
"Congressional Government" to take positions in different 
colleges. He accepted the position of associate professor of 
history and political science in Bryn Mawr College, Pennsyl- 
vania, and there he took up the work he was to pursue during 
the succeeding eighteen years. It was significant of the 
future, perhaps, that his first position was in a woman's 
college. 

Meanwhile, the vows to Miss Axson had not been forgotten. 
On June 24, 1885, they were married at her grandfather's 
house in Savannah. Their honeymoon was spent in the 
mountains of North Carolina, near Waynesville, where gen- 
tlemen and ladies of South Carolina and Georgia had spent 
vacations and honeymoons for a hundred years or more. 
The next autumn the young couple took up their residence 



YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 23 

near Philadelphia, and Wilson began the work of teaching 
the art and science of government to young ladies. He 
began his career very near where his paternal grandfather 
had begun nearly a hundred years before and not far from 
Princeton where his great triumphs, as well as his sorest trials, 
were to take place. 



CHAPTER II 
THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE was in the suburbs of Philadel- 
phia. Its doors had only a short time before been opened. 
There was every opportunity for its president and board of 
control to set themselves to new tasks, to improvement and 
reform, and doubtless Wilson felt that the way was open. At 
any rate, the limitations of the legal profession, as he had 
felt them in Atlanta, could not apply. 

But Philadelphia was already bound hand and foot to the 
great Pennsylvania machine whose master was Don Cam- 
eron. And in Pennsylvania men had gone a long way from 
those ideals which Franklin had set up and which Lincoln 
temporarily restored in 1860. The conventions of Georgia 
could not have been more stifling than were the limitations 
of the new environment. Nor was there more freedom 
across the river in New Jersey. The whole North was in 
1885 caught in that full and driving current which made 
men behave in essential things just as the Southerners had 
behaved under the heavy pressure of slavery. 

In such a world the young lawyer-professor had little to 
do but stick to his last. For the moment all his ideas, as 
expressed in "Congressional Government," were abandoned, 
save as they might be pressed upon the young women of 
well-to-do families who attended his lectures. He was 
simply a teacher; and three years of successful study and 
teaching followed. From Bryn Mawr he went to Wesley an 

«4 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 25 

University, Middletown.Conn., in 1888,where he taught young 
men, doubtless with more satisfaction, till 1890. His next 
move was to Princeton where he became professor of jurispru- 
dence, that is, he taught political science. This position he 
held for thirteen years and he quickly became one of the 
best known specialists in his subject in the country. 

His success at Princeton was instant, and he was in frequent 
demand for lectures and addresses all over the East. At 
home his students adored him, while his colleagues readily 
yielded to his leadership in University matters. They were 
happy years, those thirteen of his professorship at Princeton. 
And the circumstances of his home were also most favourable 
to his development. 

Mrs. Wilson was a woman of genuine culture and real 
interest in the work of her husband. She was interested, 
moreover, in art on her own account. She designed the 
Wilson home and made it an artistic retreat, although the 
income of the family was not such as to make it luxurious. 
There were three daughters in the family who added liveliness 
as they grew older. And young Stockton Axson, Mrs. Wil- 
son's brother, who had joined the household at Wesleyan, 
remained a constant member of the family group at Prince- 
ton where he was professor of English literature till 1913. 
Miss Helen Bones, Mr. Wilson's cousin of the old Augusta 
connection, came on to attend a school for young ladies in 
Princeton. She, too, was a member of the family for the 
period of her studies in the town.^ And Doctor Joseph R. 
Wilson, worn out with many years of teaching and preaching 
in the South, took up his abode with his favourite son during 
these early Princeton years. It was a big family and there 
was always good talk and frequent entertainment of guests. 

'Miss Bones became^a member of the Wilson family again when it* head entered the White 
House in 1013. 



26 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Wilson had undergone such a regular and steady develop- 
ment that he never broke with the strong church of his 
Scotch forebears. He was regularly at church and a leader 
in its work. Nor did the atmosphere at Princeton tend 
to develop other tendencies. He was a moderate, how- 
ever, and not a little impatient with the ancient dogmas 
and fearful hymnology of Presbyterianism; but it was the 
inij)aticnce of reform and not of revolt. He was an active 
ruling elder in the Second Church of Princeton during most 
of his career as professor in the University. 

Success as a teacher and acceptability as a leader in his 
father's church were not the goals which Wilson had set 
himself. His own genius, stimulated by the remarkable 
scholarship of Herbert B. Adams at Johns Hopkins, pointed 
the way to historical research. And while yet a young teacher 
at Bryn Mawr, he wrote an article for the New Princeton 
Review which marked him for an original thinker in history. 
It was the beginning of that period of American historical 
research in which the notion that facts, all the facts, consti- 
tute the beginning and the end of success was so popular. 
Although Wilson was himself a pupil of Herbert Adams, the 
foremost of the "Germans," he pointed out how much more 
important it was to understand, to read the sources with 
the eye of imagination. He demanded that historians know 
more of life and human nature; he declared that the whole 
field of literature was the historian's laboratory. 

Moreover, there was at that time a growing dogmatism 
among historians that all the great choices of life are made 
from economic motives. To this young Wilson replied that 
"men love gain, but they sometimes love one another."' 
Two years later he points out the failure of James Bryce in 



•The Neva Princeton Rttiew, March, 1887. 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 27 

his "American Commonwealth" to understand the growth 
of American nationaUty although he did point out the 
greatness of Bryce's contribution.^ Thus early did Wil- 
son suggest one of the most important facts in American 
history. The nation was not struck off either in 1776 or 
1787, as Gladstone declared with so much gusto: "until a 
people thinks its government national it is not national." 
There was no nation in the United States till after the 
defeat of General Lee at Appomattox.^ 

In similar fresh and independent manner Wilson re- 
viewed Burgess's "Political Science" in the Atlantic 
Monthly in 1891 and found it almost entirely wanting. Nor 
did James Ford Rhodes meet the test of true history in 
his monumental volumes then beginning to make a stir 
in the world. To Wilson it was shallow learning that 
treated the great Civil War as involving the treason of 
one section and the righteous apotheosis of the other. There 
was no treason, since there had been no nation till the war 
determined the question of sovereignty.^ 

In the unfolding of Wilson's genius for the quick under- 
standing of American history, the influence of Frederick J. 
Turner, while both men were still at Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, can not be overlooked. It was the time for a fresh 
judgment of the American development. Both Turner and 
Wilson had eyes of their own and both were men of independ- 
ent thought, a very rare thing in historians. One of them 
was from the far-off state of Wisconsin, not then so well 
known as now; the other was fresh from the broken South. 
They walked together and talked together. American 



'Young Wilson's review ol Bryce's book was the best of all that appeared in America, and it led 
to a warm and close friendship of the two men. 
* Political Science Quarterly, March, 1889. 
» Atlantic Monthly, August, 1893. 



28 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

history and the weakness of the American method of poHti- 
cal expression were their themes. Wilson surely influenced 
Turner and lent new earnestness to his historical independ- 
ence. Turner made Wilson realize how much the West 
and the ever-moving frontier had determined the course of 
American history.^ If Turner has never written a full history 
of the country, he has influenced the writing of that history 
more than any other man of his generation. If Wilson never 
became the great historian that he could easily have been, 
there can be no doubt that he influenced the interpretation 
of American history in a way that few had done before him. 
It sometimes seems a pity that Wilson leaned more and more 
to political science and finally to politics, but the great world 
will hardly quarrel with him for these backslidings. 

He did, however, in a little volume, "Division and Re- 
union," published in 1893, set up a school of historical 
thought which has long since become orthodox. His idea 
that the nation was not born till the close of the Civil War 
he made the basis of his treatment of the period of 1829 to 
1889, and he made the case so clear that few cavil at him to- 
day. The South was right in law and constitution, but 
wrong in history. The East, on the other hand, was wrong 
in law and constitution but right in history. 

That Wilson understood Americans as few other students 
did is shown in his essay on "A Calendar of Great Ameri- 
cans," published in "Mere Literature" in 1896. Hamilton 
he classed as a great European, ill fitted to lead or shape the 
life of a frontier people who hated Europe. Of Jefferson, 
Wilson was a less discerning critic. Nor did he make Wash- 
ington fit his principle of classification closely; he admired 
Washington too much. But Lincoln he loved and under- 
stood at the same time, a rare thing for a young Southerner, 

'(.'onversiUion with the President and a letter of Professor Turner dated October 7, 1919. 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 29 

brought up to think of the great war president as "a black 
RepubUcan." But Wilson was a peculiarly free spirit even 
from the first. 

His essays, his reviews of historical works, and his "Di- 
vision and Reunion" were not all of his writings in the field 
of history. In 1896 he published his "George Washington," 
a book which was, to be sure, interesting and characteristic; 
but it was all eulogy, it portrayed in all-too-glowing 
colours that Virginian civilization which flowered about 
the time of the Revolution and which went down in irretriev- 
able ruin before the reform strokes of Thomas Jefferson. 
There was no analysis of character, no understanding of 
the delicate balancing of social forces in Virginia or pene- 
trating interpretation of constitutions and laws, such as 
Wilson gave promise of in his shorter historical studies. He 
only added to the steel-engraving status of the Father of his 
Country. 

Nor was he more successful in his larger work, "The 
History of the American People," 1902. In this book of 
five volumes there are many fresh interpretations and some 
changes of emphasis. It is written in the style of the 
"George Washington," flowing English and expository, 
illustrating the major contentions of the "Division and Re- 
union"; but it does not portray those greater forces in Ameri- 
can history which were making short work of constitutions 
and laws, of divisions of powers, and limitations of govern- 
mental authority. Not even the brilliant suggestions of the 
review of Goldwin Smith's "History," The Forum, 1893, or 
the fine analysis of the reconstruction era, described in 
the Atlantic Monthly, in 1901, are made use of. In this last 
of Wilson's historical works there is a self -drawn portrait of 
the man, his personal view of critical events, and his enter- 
taining style; but that is all. He was about to quit the 



30 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

field of liistory, for which he had shown such talent, without 
leaving the world a masterpiece. He was not to be a great 
historian.' 

In another field he had already shown equal if not superior 
gifts in the field of political science. In his first book there 
appeared the spirit of criticism, of mastery, of precocious 
judgment in all that pertains to the science of government. 
Not many young men still in their undergraduate days have 
manifested the insight into human institutions that he 
manifested in his preliminary sketch of "Congressional 
Government." One thinks of James Bryce's first draft of 
The Holy Roman Empire, a college exercise, but of few others. 
In the New Princeton Review, in the Political Science 
Qvarterly, and many other periodicals, from 1887 to the day 
when Wilson became president of Princeton University, 
he put forth articles and studies on government and poli- 
tics which marked him as a gifted critic, even leader in 
public affairs, if ever scholars should come to their own in the 
United States. 

He is plainly a disciple of Edmund Burke, a young Ameri- 
can saturated with the writings of Adam Smith, of Waltei 
Bagehot, Sidney Smith, and John Stuart Mill. The peculiar 
English Constitution is frequently the object of his keen 
critical judgment and discriminating praise. He sees plainly 
that free men are free men only because they have had long 
years of training in self-government. But the one thought is 
the necessity of responsible leadership if men are to arrive at 
results and make reform. He laments now, as in 1879, the 
hit-or-miss methods of Congress, the failure of American 
presidents to outline policies and seek to guide legislation. 
There was no government in Washington, he proclaimed 

' Wilson, like soiii<* of his abli-st contemporaries, never sat himself down for a laborious work 
hcciiusc ho felt so strongly the instant need of things. He wrote his "American People" for P 
popular magazine, not for the future nor for the thinkers of his own time. 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 31 

many times, and he found plenty of witnesses to that claim' 
among the writers who spoke with authority on the sub- 
ject. As an ardent tariff reformer, an admirer of George 
William Curtis, and believer in the Democratic party, he 
viewed with unmixed pleasure the second advent of Grover 
Cleveland to office. It was a time for his ideas to get a 
hearing from men in high station. It was all a matter of 
leadership, good administration, and the application of the old 
principles of British Liberalism, of government by gentlemen 
and for the people. 

"Large powers and unhampered discretion seem to 
me the indispensable conditions of responsibility. There 
is no danger in power if it be not irresponsible. It is harder 
for democracy to organize administration than for monarchies 
to do so. We have enthroned public opinion. . . . The 
reformer in a democracy must stir up the public to search for 
an opinion and then manage to put the right opinion in its 
way." 2 In April, 1893, he wrote a significant article for 
The Review of Reviews in which he repeats all his former 
ideas and very gently but strongly urges the new president 
to resume leadership. The relations of Cabinet and Congress 
might now be made intimate since for the first time in many 
years all elements of the Government were in full accord. Let 
the President become prime minister and let Cabinet officers 
become the media for the coordination of the people's in- 
terests. 

What neither Wilson nor the new president saw in those 
critical days of the second Cleveland Administration was the 
growing, crying, and shameful inequalities and exploitations 
in American social and economic life. There can be no 
political democracy where economic democracy fails. And 

'"Lettersand Journals of Lord Elc;in," London, 1872, 1?1; Brj'ce's Commonxceallh, 
* Political Science Quarterly, June, 1887. 



S2 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

that fact underlay the Cleveland troubles that brewed thick 
and fast as soon as it became evident that he did not hear the 
cries of the sufiFering South and West. Any application of 
Wilson's reforms would have focused more sharply than 
ever the responsibility for doing nothing, and while Cleve- 
land was a brave man, those who had brought about his 
second nomination and election did not wish the whole na- 
tion to turn its eyes upon the cause of its ills. 

For twenty years divided counsels had been a cover for the 
exploitations which had made the word "democracy" a farce 
in the country. Now the only escape from a public under- 
standing of the failures of reforms — financial, tariff, and other- 
wise — offered in the strictest maintenance of the old habit 
of sharply divided powers. If Congress muddled the tar- 
iff and left the burdens of taxation on the shoulders of the 
poor, the President might publicly wash his hands of re- 
sponsibility; if the President refused any and all reforms of an 
iniquitous financial system. Congress could point to its silver 
legislation; and if both Congress and President agreed upon 
some mitigation of unfair tariff taxation by enacting an in- 
come tax, the Supreme Court could veto it as a violation of 
the Federal Constitution. Thus nothing would be done and 
the Constitution could be trusted to salve men's consciences. 

The time had come in the history of the great indus- 
trial states of the North when strict construction of the 
Constitution, the principle of a sharply enforced limitation 
of powers as between the great departments of government 
was as important to them as a similar system of administra- 
tion had been to the great planters of 1860. The Republican 
party was as much the champion of privilege in the period 
of 1880 to 1900 as the Democratic party had been when 
Jefferson Davis and James Buchanan had been its leaders. 
Could Cleveland make a new and ardent democracy of groups 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 33 

of men who gave him his second chance? Could Gorman 
and Whitney and Gresham and the rest make a Lincoln of 
Cleveland? 

It is a rare thing that university professors have the fore- 
sight to sympathize with great popular movements. And 
Wilson was no exception to the rule in the early Princeton 
days. He hardly wished the President to place himself at 
the head of the distressed and revolutionary Southern and 
Western elements of the national population. Yet he had a 
vague feeling that the masses were not wrong as he showed 
when he said in a well-known address at Princeton: "The 
danger does not lie in the fact that the masses, whom we have 
enfranchised, seek to work any iniquity upon us, for their aim, 
take it in the large, is to make a righteous polity."^ Nor is it 
at all improbable that he voted for Mr. Bryan in that alarm- 
ing election. But if so, he had not changed the view so often 
expressed that the people could not know what was best for 
them. He frequently used language like the following : When 
young college men go home to face "the unthinking mass 
of men"; and again, "to hear the agitators talk, you would 
suppose that righteousness was young and wisdom but of 
yesterday. . . . How many [educated men] know when 
to laugh? "2 

Although Wilson's plan of responsible leadership must 
have compelled public men to make reforms, and he was to 
that extent a reformer himself, he was still a Liberal of the 
Gladstone school, an American scholar who hoped to see 
American institutions take on more of the forms of the 
British constitutional procedure. Such a proposition, if 
made in Congress or in a great national convention, would 
have caused its author to be denounced as something worse 

^Tke Forum, December, 1896. 
''The Forum, September, 1894. 



34 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

than a scholar in poHtics. Wilson was thus not quite a 
practical man, as, in fact, it was charged that all the George 
William Curtis reformers were not. 

But it is given to a professor of jurisprudence in an Eastern 
university to be both conservative and unpractical. Wilson 
had no dream that he should ever be the president of the 
United States. His books and his students interested him. 
Of the former, he was constantly putting out his due pro- 
portion, and the University authorities were taking notice of 
his industry if not raising his salary. In 1889 he had pub- 
lished "The State, Elements of Historical and Practical Poli- 
tics," a text book which went through many editions and 
played a great part in the training of young men all over the 
country. Some of his best studies of politics and of the 
philosophy of government he brought out in two of the best 
books he ever published : " An Old Master and Other Essays " 
and "Mere Literature," both of that lean year, 1893. More- 
over, he was busy all the while presenting his ideas to au- 
diences, such as that of the Chicago Exposition of 1893, of 
the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, and of universities every- 
where. There were few more eloquent or effective speakers 
in the country. The fruit of these years of thinking as well 
as the consummation of his political thought may be found 
in " Constitutional Government of the United States," a work 
which came out after he had become a public leader as presi- 
dent of Princeton University.^ 

In this work one sees the mature thought of Professor Wil- 
son. He is still the sincere Liberal, a believer in his own 
earlier views as to the need of leadership in American life. 
As he contrasted the pushing business men of the country, 
who had captured the resources of the people and become im- 
mensely rich, with the leaders of political life, he noted the 

'WooJruw Wilson, "Constilution:il C'luvorniiR-nt in the United r^totes," Xe* York, 1908. 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 35 

concentration of initiative and responsibility in the one class 
and the division of authority in the other. He could not 
help explaining the failure of public men by making plain 
that they had never been trusted with the powers necessary to 
the protection of the public interest. The Fathers had, 
he contended, endeavoured to set up a Newtonian system 
of government which should, when once set going, never 
cease to function, as if it were propelled by some social law of 
gravitation. 

Thus he repeats the criticisms of his "Congressional 
Government." The presidency stood aloof; each house of 
Congress was self-suflBcient; and the Supreme Court main- 
tained a lofty independence all its own. No other such 
machine existed in the modern world. It was and still is an 
anachronism, a left-over of that magnificent age of French 
interpretation of the British system, something that never had 
existence elsewhere. But remarkable as the American con- 
stitutions were, Wilson portrayed them and their workings 
in clear and penetrating chapters. At the end of his first 
period of constructive study, he is full and ripe, just and 
admirably balanced. His chapter on the courts is one of 
the most enlightening portrayals of that difficult sub- 
ject in our literature. He says not a word too much; he 
leaves little to be said. 

But in all that he says there is a marked tone of moderate 
conservatism. He prefers the American courts to the Brit- 
ish. And much as he thinks America has lost by the sepa- 
rating of executive from legislative departments, he gives an 
account of the two Houses of Congress which Congressmen 
themselves would hardly resent. He shows how secret com- 
mittees militate against good government, but hardly touches 
upon the corruption that inherently connects itself with such 
secrecy. Political parties receive philosophical treatment. 



36 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

They are the necessary products of the constitutions that 
had been set up. They hold men and states together by 
their hot scramble for oflace. Their bosses are evils, but lesser 
evils than the anarchy which they prevent. Americans 
have great, smooth, and selfish party machines because 
Americans will not officially trust anybody with authority 
and leadership. 

Contrary to Wilson's philosophy of concentrated lead- 
ership as the practice of judicial vetoes is, he does not find 
another way in a country of written constitutions. He 
does not hesitate to say that courts should annul social 
legislation that invades the field of state activity. Harsh 
child-labour laws are better to him in 1908 than too-far-reach- 
ing Federal statutes. Yet he sees that conflicting laws of 
states in regulation of interstate commerce is one of the 
greatest evils of the time. He makes plain that the object of 
the framers of the Federal Constitution was to thwart 
democracy, but he does not condemn the motive. It is not 
his place to condemn but to describe. 

In this final fruit of Wilson's thinking on American con- 
stitutional practices we have less of the avowed Burkeian 
philosophy and more of the American eclectic. The author 
has grown mature. He no longer writes with strong under- 
tones of disapprobation as in the earlier years. While he 
sees the fatal weakness of the American system, he doubtless 
feels that institutions more than a hundred years old do not 
easily lend themselves to quick improvement. He would 
still have the president lead the country and guide Congress; 
but he shows much more of the patience with presidents who 
refuse to follow the advice than he had once shown. Of new 
things, sudden changes, and quick reforms he has none too 
high an estimate. "You had better endure the ills you know 
than fly to ills you know not of," was perhaps his frame of 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 37 

mind. It was Wilson the statesman that spoke in these pages 
and the conservative statesman, too. In proof of this there 
is abundant evidence. But while this book was a-making 
and long before it went to press another way to leadership 
had opened to Wilson, the road to the presidency of Princeton 
University. 

The old College of New Jersey, beginning to be known as 
Princeton University,^ was founded in 1746 as a true school 
of the prophets. Its professors had been for more than a 
hundred years the devoted teachers of young ministers and 
young teachers who went into the great Southern and 
Western wildernesses to toil and pray among frontier folk. 
When Wilson was himself a student at Princeton, the at- 
mosphere was still one of prayer and religious devotion. The 
spirit of Jonathan Edwards and of Doctor Witherspoon 
were still potent forces there when Wilson became a professor, 
although the leaven of the newer and worldly life of America 
was doing its work. While Wilson was primarily a historian 
and a political scientist, he could not avoid taking a part in 
the administration of President Patton. The full day of 
presidential autocracy in American colleges had not dawned 
and successful professors had a large share in the general 
management of their institutions. 

Nor was Wilson's share in the least unwelcome. He had a 
great influence with the students and his reputation as a 
writer was daily growing. It was the day of science versus 
the humanities. Wilson was a humanitarian. He had never 
shaken off the influence of that stem classical training 
which his grandfather had given him. Woodrow Wilson had 
grown up in the atmosphere of Greek words and Latin forms 
and he never broke with his own past. It was natural, then, 
that he should break a lance for the humanities. He played 

'The college was formally christened Princeton University in ISyC. ^ 



38 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the part well in The Forum, in September, 1894 : Science is cold 
and calculating. It allows nothing to the human spirit. And 
the by-products of its laboratories are lack of faith and 
absence of that reverence for great things which are of the 
very essence of history. Science can never combat socialism. 
The two are alike scientific and not sufficiently human. It 
was the day when men in the universities feared socialism. 

He would have all young men know the languages of 
ancient philosophy and ancient government. They must 
know Greek and Latin and Mathematics, for "the good of 
their souls" as he said in a New York address. And know- 
ing these they must "get great blocks of history" in or- 
der to know what men had struggled for in all time, to have 
the material in mind for testing new devices in social 
and political life. To this formidable list of things to be 
known by the college graduate he adds a longer and fuller 
study of English literature where once again men will come 
to know the materials men have worked upon, the ideals for 
which men have fought and died. 

"Every university should make the reading of English 
literature compulsory from entrance to graduation. It 
offers the basis of a common American culture for college men. 
It gives imagination for affairs and the standards by which 
things invisible and of the spirit are to be measured."^ 
In Princeton and elsewhere young Professor Wilson was re- 
garded as the champion of the humanities as against the 
scientists; and there was other reason for addresses at 
colleges and associations of teachers and ministers. It was 
not as a candidate for the presidency of Princeton or any 
other office that he was so active. He was naturally a leader 
of men, original in his research and fearless in the promulga- 
tion of his ideas — and ideas filled his mind to overflow. 

I'/'/ie Forum, Se[)tember, 1894. 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 39 

It was in recognition of this that he was chosen in 1896 to 
dehver one of the addresses in commemoration of the one 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the 
College of New Jersey. It was to be a great occasion in the 
college world, and the opportunity to impress leaders of 
educational thought was so inviting that Wilson prepared 
himself as he had never before prepared for an address. It 
was in October, in the midst of that historic first Bryan 
campaign when all the East was keyed to a high pitch 
of nervous excitement. What Wilson said was both a pro- 
fession of faith and a chart for the future. He made a pro- 
found impression and his address was printed in full in The 
Forum, a periodical whose pages had already been opened 
by the editor, Mr. Walter H. Page, to the productions of his 
young fellow Southerner. 

I have already said that this was a notable address. It 
was the most important of Wilson's public pronouncements 
before he entered the presidency of the United States, seven- 
teen years later. After a careful review of the greater events 
in Princeton's history and Princeton's contribution to the 
American social and national life and when he had his 
audience following him in full acceptance of his views, he reit- 
erated his ideal university training: "Religion is the salt 
of the earth wherewith to keep both duty and learning sweet 
against the taint of time and change; the catholic study of the 
world's literature as a record of the spirit is the right prepara- 
tion for leadership in the world's affairs; you do not know the 
world until you know the men who have possessed it and 
tried its ways before ever you were given your brief run 
upon it; the cultured mind can not complain, it can not 
trifle, it can not despair, leave pessimism to the uncultured 
who do not know the reasonableness of hope."^ 

^Tke Forum, December, 1896. 



40 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

But having shown the way to university men everywhere, 
he sounded a warning against the dangers which threatened 
men: "I am much mistaken if the scientific spirit of the age 
is not doing us a great disservice, working in us a certain 
great degeneracy. Science has transformed the world and 
owes httle debt of obhgation to any past age. It has driven 
mystery out of the universe. Science teaches us to beheve in 
the present and in the future more than in the past, to deem 
the newest theory of society the UkeHest. It has given us 
agnosticism in the realm of philosophy and scientific anarchy 
in the field of politics." Although he recognized that these 
by-products of science were perhaps not the intended results 
of scientific investigation, they did set the world agog and 
they made it the duty of teachers and leaders everywhere 
to beware the dangers of a final break with the past, to guard 
young men against abandoning the "old drill, the old memory 
of times gone by, the old schooling in precedent and tradition, 
the old keeping of the faith as a preparation for leadership 
in days of social change. We must make the humanities 
human again; we must recall what manner of men we are." 

"It has been Princeton's work, in all ordinary seasons, not 
to change but to strengthen society, to give not yeast but 
bread for the raising; the business of the world is not in- 
dividual success, but its own betterment, strengthening, and 
growth in spiritual insight. There is laid upon us the com- 
pulsion of the national life. We dare not keep aloof and 
closet ourselves while a nation comes to its maturity." 
It was surely a remarkable appeal to educators everywhere 
which W^ilson made that day, and its publication a little later 
extended its range to all the universities. From that time 
he was regarded at Princeton as the most suitable man for the 
next presidency. 

All the logic of events as well as the growing fame of Wilson 



THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 41 

pointed to him as the one man whom the trustees must 
select in due time to lead the University. Students and pro- 
fessors alike favoured the change. And in 1899 when Yale, 
which had always influenced Princeton, abandoned its policy 
of a clergyman for president and chose Professor Hadley as 
its leader, the pressure became stronger. In 1902, President 
Patton quietly laid down the baton of office, retaining his 
professorship in the Theological Seminary, and Woodrow 
Wilson took up the work of president of Princeton University. 
He was a little less than forty-six years old; he waswell-known 
as a historian and the leader of the new profession of political 
science; and he was an orator of unusual grace and elo- 
quence, a layman come first to the successorship of a long line 
of clergyman presidents of the University. The query of all 
was: "What will this layman do in his new and important 
role?" It was not long before the country knew what the 
President of Princeton was doing and Princeton itself could 
not be kept off the front pages of the secular press everj^- 
where. Men sought to put new wine in old bottles and 
there was much difficulty to keep the vessels whole. 



CHAPTER III 
NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY is one of the oldest institu^ 
tions of learning in the United States. It was founded in 1746 
by radical democrats calling themselves evangelical Presby- 
terians of whom William Tennent and his three remarkable 
preacher sons were the pioneers. These earnest men were 
very much like the early Franciscan monks who carried the 
Gospel to the poor and the rich without money and without 
price. They preached a doctrine of freedom, emotionalism, 
and faith in the ancient classics that had a profound in- 
fluence upon the Middle colonies and the old South. They 
travelled, like the Methodists, everywhere; they invaded the 
precincts of older and more conservative ministers; and they 
set up log schools wherever young men interested in learning 
could be brought together. The College of New Jersey, as 
the institution was called in its early history, was the chief of 
all these schools; it was the "headquarters" of the travelling 
preachers as well as all those of the so-called New Light 
persuasion.^ 

For more than a hundred years it did its marvellous 
work on an endowment ranging from nothing to two hundred 
thousand dollars and with a teaching corps of five or six 
devoted men. Latin, Greek, a little mathematics, and a 
wealth of Scotch theology composed their stock in trade. 



'Alexander, A., " Biographicul Sketches of the Founders and Principal Alumni of the Log 
College," Princeton, 1845, 

42 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 43 

Aaron Burr, senior, Samuel Davies, and the beloved Doctor 
John Witherspoon were their leaders and models of char- 
acter. The students, numbering from a score to a hundred 
and fifty, were in the main poor fellows from the Middle 
States and the South who intended to become preachers, teach- 
ers or, in the Revolutionary years, public men. The atmos- 
phere of the place was that of a monastery. All day long 
students and professors were busy with their classics and 
their theology or arranging the necessaries of a frugal life, 
chopping their wood in winter or cultivating their gardens 
in summer. While this appears unusual and primitive to us, 
it was but a miniature of the life of the people of the United 
States before 1860.^ 

But this stern, simple ideal was not to continue. The 
Civil War which worked so great a change in other ways 
revolutionized the College of New Jersey. Soon after the 
close of the war Doctor James McCosh, an eminent Scotch 
divine, somewhat inclined to accept the fatal Darwinian 
theory of evolution, became the president of the old school. 
He found the alumni of Princeton growing rich everywhere 
in the North. They gave of their wealth to erect new 
buildings and to equip new laboratories. Their sons went 
to the college in increasing numbers. They were not theo' 
logs, but merely young men seeking an education. Science 
gradually won a place in this school of the prophets, due per- 
haps to the great influence of Professor Henry, the physicist. 
Slowly the old austerity gave place to an easier piety. A 
rich people, like those of the United States were coming to be, 
could not have their sons attend prayers in cold winter 
weather at five o'clock in the morning. In the twenty years 
following the advent of Doctor McCosh, in 1868, the college 
changed its character perceptibly. 

'CoUiiLs, Varnum L., " Princeton." This is a valuable brief history of Princeton University. 



44 WOODROW WILSON AND fflS WORK 

But after 1888, when President Patton occupied "the 
place of Witherspoon," the change took on an amazing pace. 
Beautiful buildings adorned the campus. The professors in- 
creased in number and assumed the manners of men of the 
world, even if their salaries did remain meagre. The students, 
instead of chopping their own firewood and bringing water 
from the nearest wells, united in clubs, built themselves 
luxurious clubhouses, employed the best of servants, and dined 
in the manner of gentlemen who knew the good things of 
life. Instead of the dog-eared Greek and Latin texts of 
their primitive predecessors handed down from generation to 
generation, they found excellent tutors who could, for a con- 
sideration, drill enough of the wicked classics into their easy- 
going heads to enable them to pass examinations and take the 
(;oveted degree at the ends of their stipulated periods of study. 
As a certain lady patron of the University was wont to say, 
"Princeton was a delightfully aristocratic place." 

At this turn in the history of the University Woodrow 
Wilson, the son of one of those poor, austere students of the 
older days, became president. As we already know, he be- 
lieved in work both for its own sake and for the sake of 
students who needed to fight the devil with busy brains. He 
believed not only in setting the Princeton youth to work; he 
thought the students of all the colleges of the East needed to 
have their attention called to the purposes for which men go 
to college. Harvard,Yale, and the rest were in like plight with 
Princeton. Fraternities, clubs, and athletic sports had every- 
where usurped, as he said, the functions of the "main tent." 
Men went to college to have a good time, to learn a little from 
their fellows, and return home finished gentlemen, farther 
removed than ever from the workaday world in which all 
men should have a personal part. 

If Princeton was to be set again upon the hard and thorny 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 45 

path of Doctor Witherspoon, the new president had a task 
before him. It was the year 1902 when all the United States 
was busy with its great trusts, with its railroad combina- 
tions stronger than the Government itself, and with its metro- 
politan newspapers whose editors could make or unmake 
men and plans more easily than they can now. Wilson's 
task was a delicate task; for, in addition to making 
students study, he must not alienate the professors, always 
slow to welcome change, and he must hold the allegiance of 
the wealthy fathers and other alumni whose sons and friends 
would dislike intensely the contemplated reforms. 

The endowment of Princeton, in 1902, was about two 
millions; the number of professors was one hundred and 
eight; and the number of students thirteen hundred. There 
was an annual deficit to be met by the president from gifts 
of alumni and friends. 

Wilson set about his work quietly. He improved the 
student honour system which he had caused to be introduced 
a few years before by the organization of the senior council, 
a body of students whose business it was to lead and give 
tone to undergraduate activities of all sorts and sit in judg- 
ment over those who failed to observe the tacit rules of the 
student governing system. 

He endeavoured to have more rigorous tests applied in the 
examinations and to give greater importance to the marking 
system. It became increasingly difficult for men to pass 
their examinations, and after 1902 somewhat more than a 
hundred students were required to leave college each year 
because they had not passed their tests. The president 
announced in one of his earlier addresses that "some day I 
predict with great confidence there will be an enthusiasm 
for learning in Princeton,"' 

'The Alumni Weekly, November 26, 190*. 



46 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

The sincerity of the president is manifested in his second 
annual report in which he acknowledges without embarrass- 
ment the falling off in the number of students. He had said 
in his inaugural that " the college is for the minority who plan, 
who conceive and mediate between social groups and must 
see the wide stage whole. We must deal with the spirits of 
men, not with their fortunes. The man who has not some 
surplus of thought and energy to expend outside the narrow 
circle of his own task and interest is a dwarfed, uneducated^ 
man." He was now endeavouring to make good that 
prophecy. 

Of equal importance was his reform of the curriculum so 
as to make it meet the needs of an advancing age. The 
classics were retained as the basic content in the training of 
men who expected to study in the field of the social sciences, 
for men who were to deal with history and other manifesta- 
tions of the human spirit. But if students wished to 
devote the major part of their work to the sciences, and win 
at the end of their courses the B. S. degree, they might 
omit Greek and add an equivalent in the modern languages. 
But all students were to follow a certain prescribed course 
during the first two years of their college careers. It was 
rather an ideal solution of the problem, and many colleges 
and universities of the country have been influenced by 
it. 

But a larger matter was already engaging the new presi- 
dent's attention. In his efforts to induce men to love study 
and to guide them in their search for the best and most useful 
knowledge, he came to the conclusion that one of the reasons 
for the break-down in the intellectual morale of American 
universities was the fact that teachers had got out of touch 
with their students. There were too many students in pro- 

'Princeton Universily Bulletin, 1901-03. Wilson's inaugural. 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 47 

portion to the number of experienced teachers, as well as too 
many fat purses. How was the professor to regain that in- 
timate companionship with the young men under his care 
which had made the early graduates of Princeton such 
successful and even famous men? 

This question Wilson answered in his annual report of 1904 
in what has come to be called the preceptorial system. In this 
he was doubtless influenced by the ideas of President Harper 
of the University of Chicago who had insisted from the 
foundation of that institution that successful teaching could 
only be done in small classes. But Wilson went further. He 
would not only have small classes. He would have a large 
number of capable instructors live in the dormitories, become 
companions of the young men, and guide their studies and 
reading. He would put college boys into touch with maturer 
minds and give them the companionship which they so much 
needed. It was not the Oxford system although there was 
a certain resemblance to it. 

If this system were to be made effective it would cost the 
University a hundred thousand dollars a year. Wilson ap- 
pointed a great committee of alumni ' and supporters of the 
University of which Cleveland H. Dodge and Cyrus H. Mc Cor- 
mick were members and asked them to provide the funds. 
Large sums of money were found and within a year the plan 
went into effect with general approval, although some mem- 
bers of the faculty were a little disposed to demur when two 
score young doctors of philosophy, engaged as tutors, and un- 
acquainted with the ancient ways of Princeton, were admitted 
to that body with professorial privileges. Nor did the 
students hasten to assume this second burdensome yoke of 
study; however, there was too much enthusiasm everywhere 
in 1905 for the new president for resistance to be seriously 

^Alumni fVoekly, February 25, 1005. 



48 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

offered. The preceptorial system of instruction became at 
once a part of the Princeton method.^ 

The hastening of the pace of student work, the solution of 
the problems of the curriculum, the classics, and the far 
larger matter of how best to lead young men into the paths 
of scholarship and science pointed the way the president 
would go to the end. He was earnest and liberal minded, 
but Scotch-bent in his plans. If his spirit prevailed the 
ideals of Jonathan Edwards and Doctor Witherspoon as 
applied in divinity would be carried into the broader work of 
the modern university and young men would go to college not 
only with burning purposes to accomplish something for 
themselves but with the ambition to do something for the 
world after graduation. 

The revolutionary character of Wilson's plans may be 
seen in an address which he delivered on November 29, 1907, 
before the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools 
of the Middle States and Maryland: "We have just passed 
through a period in education when everything seemed in 
process of dissolution, when all standards were removed; 
when men did not hold themselves to plans, but opened the 
whole field, as if you drew a river out of its course and invited 
it to spread abroad over the countryside. . . . You know 
that the pupils in the colleges in the last several decades have 
not been educated. You know that with all our teaching we 
train nobody; you know that with all our instructing we 
educate nobody. . . . We are upon the eve of a period 
when we are going to set up standards. We are upon the 
eve of a period of synthesis when, tired of this dispersion and 
standardless analysis, we are going to put things together in a 
connected and thought-out scheme of endeavour. "^ 

'Collins. V. L., "Princeton." 274-75. 

'Ford, Henry Jones, "Woodrov Wilson, the Man and His Work," New York, 1916, 49-50 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 49 

Although Wilson met with discouraging opposition in this 
rejuvenation of an ancient institution of learning, he was 
making headway. Wealthy friends and alumni gave him 
money for new buildings, new professorships, and endow- 
ments. Princeton became a subject of discussion in every 
home where men kept abreast of the times. People began to 
feel that it was doing a new work in the world and that the 
outcome of its experiments might be of great value to the 
country. But the president's work was not merely the work 
of a social reformer. He loved Princeton for its own sake, 
as was made plain in a speech accepting the gift of a beautiful 
lake by Andrew Carnegie: "I do not think that it is 
merely our doting love of the place that has led us to think 
of it as a place which those who love this country and like 
to dwell upon its honourable history would naturally be 
inclined to adorn with their gifts. . . . We could 
not but be patriotic here, and I know that you, yourself. 
Sir, feel the compulsion of this [Princeton's] noble tradi- 
tion." 1 

Other gifts besides that of Mr. Carnegie were added almost 
monthly to the long list. In the year 1906 Cleveland H. 
Dodge, David B. Jones, Moses Taylor Pyne, Cyrus H. 
McCormick, and scores of others gave liberally to the Univer- 
sity and thus enrolled themselves among those who sup- 
ported Wilson and his wide-reaching revolution in education. 
He was unconsciously knitting together a group of friends 
against the day, soon to dawn, when friends would be needed. 
At the same time he was, unavoidably to be sure, leaning 
upon the shoulders of wealthy men, men who might ultimately 
come to doubt the wisdom of democratizing the life of a great 
college. And their gifts of millions would lead them to 
suppose that their influence should be decisive. Whenever a 

^MumrU Weikly, December 8, 1906. 



50 ^VDODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

serious difference of opinion appeared between these bene- 
factors and the president, the power of the latter for good 
w^ould be ended. 

And the day of reckoning was, in fact, drawing nigh. In 
accordance w ith Wilson's matured plan of articulating all the 
resources and activities of the University about the main 
tent, as he was wont to say, the trustees, following the lead 
of the president, accepted his plan of bringing all classes of 
students together in dormitories about a common quad- 
rangle. "^ This plan was the next step after the adoption of the 
preceptorial system. One of the growing obstacles in the 
way of all success at Princeton was the club arrangements of 
the upper classmen. About half of the members of the 
Junior and Senior classes belonged to the clubs whose atmos- 
phere and tone were both undemocratic and not conducive 
to study. As elsewhere in the Eastern colleges, these in- 
stitutions formed the nucleus of an adolescent aristocracy 
based upon other things than merit as hard workers. Yet 
they absorbed the interest of the lower classmen and took the 
lead in what was called student activities in a way that 
seriously hindered the real purpose of the University. The 
one great anxiety of most students during their second year 
in college was whether the leaders of the clubs would take 
notice of them. And not to be chosen at the proper time was 
the worst that could befall a young man in the whole course 
of his student life. If Princeton was to be made, as Wilson 
half jokingly said, an institution of learning, the clubs must 
be abolished.' 

The quadrangle scheme was quite as important as the 
preceptorial system. The president, therefore, endeavoured 
to win club and alumni support for the measure before he set 



Kilumni Weekly, September 25, 1907. 

•William Bayard Hale, " Woodrow Wilson, the Story of Eta Life," Chapter VII. 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 51 

about raising the money to build the new dormitories. He sent 
to the clubs at commencement time, when many prominent 
alumni were present, an outline of his proposal, asking 
careful consideration. 

The idea was to open new dormitories of the most modern 
type on the campus, to have these grouped about a main 
quadrangle so that the members of the different classes might 
come into daily contact. Many of the preceptors and other 
unmarried members of the University faculty were to have 
quarters in the new buildings and use common parlours in 
furtherance of the preceptorial method. The plan was made 
to look as attractive as possible to club members who must 
see that ultimately their luxurious and privileged quarters 
would be rendered superfluous. 

The response came quick and disconcerting. If the new 
and "distinguished" president really intended to make 
Princeton a student democracy, there was to be war to the 
knife. The clubmen went home to protest to their fathers. 
The visiting alumni returned to their communities to or- 
ganize meetings of protest. The point they, one and all, 
emphasized was the "right of every man to choose his com- 
panions." One of the leading graduates of Princeton wrote to 
the Alumni Weekly denouncing the idea that students should 
be compelled to associate with their inferiors, although the 
language used was gently veiled. Adrian H. Joline, a New 
York business man, declared publicly that W^ilson's new 
scheme had not one redeeming feature about it. Influential 
professors shrugged their shoulders significantly when the 
quadrangle plan was mentioned. Before the president 
returned from his vacation, in September, a veritable outcry 
of students, alumni, and professors was made; and members 
of the trustees began to indicate their doubts about raising 
the necessary millions for the new buildings. The news- 



52 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

papers of the country discussed the proposed democratizing 
of the colleges.^ 

Princeton was indeed on the map, but Wilson was by no 
means certain of success. Realizing early in the autumn 
that he might be defeated, he yielded as gracefully as he might 
to a vote of the trustees, in special session, w^hich withdrew 
the quadrangle plan. He let it be known, however, that the 
idea w^as not abandoned. 

Wilson had come to a turning point in his career. As a 
Liberal, of the general type of James Bryce and John Mor- 
ley, he had undertaken to reform and revise the educational 
system of a great American college. If he had succeeded he 
must have influenced education very much all over the 
country. But Princeton did not apparently wish to become 
simply an institution of learning. The attitude of Princeton 
and its friends proved to be the attitude of most other great 
schools. I believe no other president of an American 
university made public any sympathy with the president of 
Princeton. If Wilson meant to carry his programme, he must 
w4n a larger popular support. In any campaign he might make 
it would be necessary to take boldly the ground of democ- 
racy; but if he did so a very large element of public opinion, 
and that element which guaranteed large gifts to education, 
would be enlisted against his idea. Well-to-do Americans 
were in 1907 very skeptical of democracy. 

President Wilson was a public leader in spite of himself. He 
could not retreat without confessing defeat; he could not go 
forward without definitely antagonizing a great many of the 
most generous of his supporters. The Eastern alumni on the 
whole opposed him while the Western alumni favoured him.' 

^Alumni Weekly, passim; the New York Sun, October 18, 1907. 

'A fact which illustrates admirably that abiding sectionalism which has characterized Annri- 
can history from the beginning. 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 53 

The trustees numbered about twenty-seven, the Eastern men 
opposing and the Western men favouring his reforms. In 
this critical situation, he accepted many engagements to speak, 
notably in the Middle West. At Indianapolis at Christmas 
time, 1907, he made several telling addresses and was made 
the hero of more than one occasion. Thousands of people 
crowded his meetings to hear what this new educator who 
thought young college men should be made to study and be 
brought into close personal acquaintance might have to say. 
Few people knew till then that the colleges were developing 
such habits; still fewer dreamed that college boys were op- 
posed to associating with their fellows on terms of equality. 
Everywhere men made him understand that his ideas were 
theirs. Newspapers, whose editors had not been known for 
their support of good causes, now ridiculed college students 
who wished to set up exclusive cliques and groups. Public 
opinion became his weapon and students, professors, and 
trustees quickly realized that they were on the defensive; 
personal opponents of Wilson and men who believed in letting 
things drift were angry. They hoped for a blunder on the 
part of the president. Instead, a new issue was soon made 
up. 

One of the curious facts of Wilson's administration of 
Princeton was that in 1896, when the College was expanded 
into the University, Andrew F. West, a friend of Wilson, was 
made dean of the then proposed graduate school and au- 
thorized by the trustees to make a study of European univer- 
sities and report to them a plan for the organization and 
advancement of graduate studies at Princeton. West made 
a study of European institutions promptly. When Wilson 
became president a second visit was made and an elaborate 
report submitted to the trustees. This fact and the accident 
that West was not originally expected to subordinate his 



54 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

plans to those of the president of the University led to a sort 
of rivalry that was to prove all but fatal. Wilson was the 
official head of the institution; he was active and filled with 
ideas. West was ambitious, too. The graduate school was his 
particular province and he sought support wherever he went. 
Wilson pressed upon alumni and others the cause of the 
University; West and his friends talked the graduate school. 
The one was interested primarily and increasingly in under- 
graduate studies and in making young men good citizens; the 
other in advanced studies and in the development of research, 
always a matter for the few. On many occasions Wilson 
and West made tours of the East together and spoke to the 
same audiences and shared honours almost too evenly. It 
was a case of divided authority, perhaps of rivalry. 

In 1905 a beginning was made and "Merwick," a large 
private residence, was opened for advanced work and of 
course Dean West was in full charge. The same year Mrs. 
Swann,a.staunch friend of the University, died and bequeathed 
about three hundred thousand dollars to the graduate school 
and it was decided to erect the new buildings on a site 
where the president's house had stood. But Dean West 
received in October of the same year the offer of the 
presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
He hesitated to accept and the trustees, doubtless on the 
approval of President Wilson, indicated that he ought to 
remain at Princeton and develop the graduate school. The 
offer from Boston was declined. Still the work on the new 
buildings did not begin. There was some disagreement or 
anticipated disagreement, for the committee of fifty which 
had raised so much money for the college was reorganized and 
became the graduate council, with a curious relation to the 
trustees.' Professor West was the leader in this and he thus 

'Collins. V. L., "Princeton." 281. 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 55 

gained access to the board of trustees. Everything tended 
to make of West's work a special and distinct division of 
the University, if not an entirely independent institution. 

While the plans of the graduate school lagged, President 
Wilson continued his appeal for interest in his quadrangle 
system. In March, 1908, he concluded a series of addresses 
m Chicago, in one of which he declared: "The body of teach- 
ers and pupils must be knit together, else nothing truly in- 
tellectual will ever come of it," that is of college work as then 
administered.^ The series of meetings in Chicago that year 
was significant as the West was the centre of Wilson's strong- 
est support. But the same tone was held in speeches de- 
livered in the East. 

However, in May, 1909, Mr. William C. Procter, a friend of 
Dean West, offered the University $500,000 on behalf of the 
graduate school, on condition that a like sum be contributed 
by other friends of the school. Mr. Procter significantly 
made this offer through Dean West and with the stipulation 
that the graduate school be located according to the dean's 
wishes. This meant that the graduate work of Princeton 
would be done in practical independence of the president of 
the University and at a point remote from the centre of col- 
lege life. Moreover, the president would be expected to 
raise the required $500,000 in order to secure the original 
offer. Wilson was thus asked to assist a programme of dis- 
integration that must be far-reaching in its effect. It was 
war open and avowed, although all parties were expected 
to maintain the friendliest air, after the manner of college and 
university rivalries. 

It required six months for the trustees to decide whether 
they would accept this Janus-faced gift. Then, in October, 
1909, they made up their minds to receive the gift with many 

^Alumni Weekly, March 25, 1908. 



56 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

thanks, but they asked Mr. Procter to modify his terms so 
that the president and trustees might determine the location 
of the new school. Wilson visited Mr. Procter at his home in 
Cincinnati and urged him to abandon his idea of locating 
the school at a point remote from the centre of the University. 
The appeal was unavailing. Accordingly, the trustees, upon 
the advice of the president, were about to decline the gift, 
and thus lose other large offers contingent upon the original 
offer, when Mr. Procter withdrew his proposition altogether. 
The University thus declined, early in February, 1910, gifts 
which amounted to almost a million dollars rather than ac- 
cept those gifts on conditions that defeated the purposes of 
the administration.^ 

The country, already familiar with the more important 
facts of the situation at Princeton, was astounded to learn 
that a college president had actually refused the gift of a 
million dollars. The newspapers of the whole country ap- 
plauded the act, but without taking the full measure of the 
man who had won their approval. The talk of the country 
was hardly louder than the lamentations of the men at Prince- 
ton. Professors, students, and leaders of the Eastern alumni 
made a violent outcry against a president who could thus 
sacrifice the old institution. Moses Taylor Pyne, one of 
the regular contributors to deficits and other funds of the 
University, became the leader of the campaign against Wil- 
son. The storm seemed too great for any college president 
to withstand. 

On February 16th, the trustees met again and adhered 
firmly, but on a rather close vote, to their former position. 
Worn out with the long fight and doubtless discouraged by 
the apparent timidity of weak friends, Wilson went away to 
Bermuda for a short vacation and, perhaps, to devise his 

^Alumni Weekly, February 9, 1910. 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES o7 

next moves in a diflScult game, a game, one must say, which 
had the country for spectator. 

His absence was made the opportunity for all his op- 
ponents. In the newspapers and in many meetings of the 
Eastern alumni he was abused and attacked both directly 
and by innuendo. A faculty committee appointed to consider 
the matter made minority and majority reports after the 
manner of political party committees. The majority, led by 
Professor W. M. Daniels, sustained the president; the mi- 
nority, composed of Professors West and John G. Hibben, en- 
dorsed the views of the dean.^ At a great meeting of the 
alumni in Philadelphia on March 4th, Professor Henry Van 
Dyke made an elaborate attack upon the president and Pro- 
fessor Hibben spoke in the same, if more moderate, vein at 
Montclair, New Jersey. The trustees were now so closely 
divided that a single vote was apt to turn the tide against 
Wilson. Adrian H. Joline, bitter opponent, was the can- 
didate of the East for a vacancy on the board. 

President Wilson returned early in March. He reentered 
the struggle as he was compelled to do. He visited alumni 
in all parts of the country east of the Mississippi explaining 
his plans and purposes. It was an appeal to the people. 
In Pittsburg he said: "The great voice of America does not 
come from the seats of learning. It comes in a murmur from 
the hills and the woods and the farms and factories and mills, 
rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us from the 
homes of common men. Do these murmurs echo in the 
corridors of universities? I have not heard them. The 
universities would make men forget their common origins, for- 
get their universal sympathies and join a class, and no class 
can ever serve America. I have dedicated every power that 
there is within me to bring the colleges that I have anything 

^Alumni Weekly, February 16, 1910, 



58 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

to do with to an absolute democratic regeneration in spirit, 
and I shall not be satisfied and I hope you will not be until 
America shall know that the men in the colleges are satu- 
rated with the same thought that pulses through the whole 
great body politic. 

"I know that the colleges of this country must be recon- 
structed from the top to bottom, and I know that America is 
going to demand it. While Princeton men pause and think, 
I hope that they will think on these things. Will America 
tolerate the seclusion of graduate students? Seclude a man, 
separate him from the rough and tumble of college life, from 
all the contacts of every sort and condition of men, and you 
have done a thing which America will brand with its con- 
temptuous disapproval."^ 

That was the reply to the challenge of Princeton men who 
were trying to break his power. It was an appeal to the 
country; it was democracy after the American method. It 
is plain that he had gone a long way from the position he had 
held in 1902 when he undertook the leadership of his alma 
mater. He was no longer the gentle Liberal consorting with 
the elect; he was a revolutionist pleading for a regeneration 
of all the colleges in the United States. Could he succeed.'' 
Could he even succeed at Princeton? 

The answer came quickly. Although he defeated the elec- 
tion of his opponent, Joline, to the vacancy on the board of 
trustees. Dean West made still another move. He advised 
with a certain rich man who contemplated a bequest to 
Princeton — Isaac Wyman of Massachusetts, who died in 
May, 1910, leaving a will in which a gift to the graduate 
school of Princeton amounting to three million dollars was 
stipulated, Andrew West was one of the executors of the 
will. The dead speak louder in America than the living, 

1 Quoted in Hale's "Woodrow Wilson," 152-53. 



NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 59 

Wilson's democracy could not withstand three million dollars 
handed out from the grave. At one stroke, after years of 
struggle, Dean West was the master at Princeton. He gave 
a dinner that commencement. President Wilson and Mr. 
Procter and Moses Taylor Pyne were present. Mr. Procter 
renewed his gift on the old terms. The trustees accepted 
everything. It was one of those dramatic turns in Wilson's 
fortune of which there were to be many others in the near 
future. Would he resign.? It was plain that new wine did 
not set well in old bottles. 



CHAPTER rV 
THE GREAT STAGE 

IT IS not surprising that Princeton resisted the reforms 
which President Wilson pressed upon her nor that other 
universities viewed askance the plan of democratizing col- 
lege life.^ The sons of rich men have almost always resisted 
the persuasions of their teachers to enter upon the toilsome 
road that leads to learning. What does surprise the historian 
is the readiness with which the conservatives, the bosses 
even, of the Democratic party turned to this educational 
reformer for a national leader. Moreover, it was this un- 
natural move of the conservatives of the East which set in 
motion that marvellous train of events which have made 
Woodrow Wilson the foremost leader in the world. Only a 
fair understanding of the complicated state of things in the 
United States in 1910 will enable one to understand this 
miracle of American history. 

x\t the close of the Civil War it became increasingly plain 
that Lincoln's generous policy of reconstruction would restore 
the free-trade and poverty-stricken South to its old posi- 
tion in the country and with an enlarged delegation in Con- 
gress because of the emancipation of the slaves. The South 
would thus at once exercise a large influence in national affairs. 

'"It is delightful to find how much sympathy exists for my somewhat lonely fight here 
among the men in the faculties of the great universities as well as the small colleges, and I am 
hoping every day that some other President may come out and take his place beside me. It is 
a hard fight, a long fight, and a doubtful fight, but I think I shall at least have done the good 
of precipitating a serious consideration of the matters which seem to me fundamental to the 
whole life and success of our colleges." — Letter to author, dated May 4, 1910. 

60 



THE GREAT STAGE 61 

Further, the Western states from Ohio to Nebraska had grown 
very jealous of the industrial states which dominated the 
whole North. The railroad, manufacturing, and banking 
groups of the Eastern states had grown immensely rich during 
the struggle. All these forces united in 1866 to insist upon 
a national tariff and financial policy which would hold the 
West in subjection for half a century. Westerners, therefore, 
like George Pendleton and Allen G. Thurman of Ohio and 
scores of others from other states, protested against paying 
the national debt in gold and against a steadily rising tariff 
which bore heavily upon farmers everywhere. 

Here were two powerful sections of the nation, the South 
and the West, which had formerly supported each other in 
national affairs. They each had grievances. If the South 
were readmitted to the Union, Southern and Western men 
would inevitably unite their strength and arrange a national 
policy which would serve their interests. Andrew Johnson, 
in spite of his loud talk during the early months of his presi- 
dency, represented the promise and guarantee of such a com- 
bination. Hence the bitter struggle to impeach him. In- 
dustrial men succeeded by a campaign of hatred both in de- 
feating Johnson and in holding the South out of the Union 
for a decade. Meanwhile, industrialism made its position 
secure.^ 

The Republican party was the agency through which this 
industrial supremacy was made secure.^ High tariffs, high 
wages, and rapid railway development were the popular 
slogans under which elections were carried. Prosperity with 
the exception of certain violent reactions known as panics 
was the result, a prosperity which enabled railroads to be 
built across the continent, which raised great cities upon the 

'William A. Dunning, "Reconstruction, Political and Economic," Ch. V. 

'Jemes A. Woodbitni, "The Life of Thaddeus Stevens," Indianapolis, 1913, Ch.XXI. 



62 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

plains like mushrooms that spring overnight. Industries 
that had to do with wool, cotton, iron, coal, copper, and rail- 
roads increased their returns, enriched their owners, and 
herded millions of human beings about their smoking chim- 
neys, men who spoke strange tongues, lived in dingy hovels, 
and worked for wages that just kept them going. 

From Boston to Minneapolis stretched this vast indus- 
trial domain. Railroads tied the mines and the farms of 
the rest of the country to the nerve centres of this busy, 
smoke-blackened region. National, state, and private banks 
fed the industries, the railroads, and the other ancillary busi- 
nesses with the necessary capital which was borrowed from 
Europe or from the savings of the country. Real estate rose 
in value beyond the wildest dreams of its owners because 
industry brought millions of tenants; bank and industrial 
stocks doubled and quadrupled both in volume and in price 
because vast populations gathered in the cities increased the 
consumption of goods. Rich men grew to be millionaires 
and millionaires became masters of hundreds of millions of 
wealth. Was there ever anything like it. f* The Republicans 
answered, "No," with a mighty shout. ^ 

From 1866 to 1896, the process went on almost without 
interruption. The opposition, led in the beginning by mem- 
bers of Congress from the Middle West, called itself the 
Democratic party. It consisted in a solid South voting 
against the East whether in good or ill repute and the pro- 
vincial West. The provincials of America could not see that 
it was a blessing to cover the earth with great plants and wide- 
flung mill settlements so long as cotton, corn, tobacco, and all 
other products of their lands declined in value. Their sons 



'E. Stanwood, "History of the Presidency," gives official platforms; his "Tariff Controver- 
sies" gives the philosophy. A more subtle and popular philosophy of industrialism will be 
found in John Hay's, "The Breadwinners," 1883. 




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64 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

ran away to the cities to swell the enormous tide of new- 
comers from Europe, both of which masses of men added 
to the representation of the industrial districts in Congress 
and made the more difficult the election of any leader of the 
farming groups to the presidency. Every year the country- 
regions not touched by industry became less attractive. 
Houses took on a tumbledown appearance. The South be- 
came a waste. Planters became farmers; farmers became 
tenants; and tenants took places as day labourers or emi- 
grated to the city. There was no help for it. Old America 
that lived upon the land and talked of liberty and equality 
was vanishing. Men of the Protestant faiths, people who 
read their Bibles daily and looked to the next world for ad- 
justments of the wrongs of this world, had their faith for their 
pains. Little else came their way. 

Still, it must not be inferred that the industrial forces held 
undisputed sway in all their rich region. There were remote 
Republican districts where people doubted the divinity that 
hedges business about; and there were clerks and bookkeep- 
ers and Irishmen in the big cities who worked and voted stub- 
bornly against "their betters."^ These doubting Republi- 
cans and organized common folk of the cities were potential or 
actual allies of the provincial South and West, of that older 
America which might yet win control. Nor were the pro- 
vincials altogether masters in their areas. The Negroes, 
always poor and ignorant, were a Republican thorn in the 
side of the Democratic South. Even in the agricultural 
West there were industrial and commercial pockets where the 
faith of "Pig Iron" Kelley^ was warmly preached and voted. 



'The difficulty of holdinfi a great state to an industrial prograniinc is well illustrated in Mr. 
Herbert Croly's "Marcus Hanna — His Life Work," Ch. XVI. 

'A unique champion of the industrial sj stem. See W. D. Kelley, " Speeches, Addresses, and 
Letters," 187«. 




ac 



66 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

These sometimes gained control of the machinery of govern- 
ment as in Missouri. But these are the exceptions which 
prove the rule. Articulate America was industrial; it was 
Eastern and Northern, sectional and in absolute control of the 
economic life of the country. Preachers whose names were 
known far and near, universities that were known in Europe, 
the intellectuals, as a rule, were found in the industrial belt. 
Unlike the planters of the old South, the masters of in- 
dustry, bankers, managers of railroads and large business 
concerns, with incomes ranging from some thousands to a 
million a year, declined to hold office. How could they 
afford it? It proved easier and quite as safe to connect their 
business wi^ political leadership through what all the world 
calls bosses, men like Conkling of New York, Don Cameron 
of Pennsylvania, and Mark Hanna of Ohio. These men 
controlled electoral machinery, set up candidates for Con- 
gress, town councils, and the presidency. They saw to it 
that the interests of property were more securely protected 
in free America than anywhere else in the world. ^ As in the 
South before the Civil War constitutions, state and national, 
became sacred and the courts were held to be beyond criti- 
cism. Legislative, administrative, and judicial powers were 
kept so strictly separated that effective social regulation of 
industry was almost impossible. The dead men who had 
written constitutions were everywhere more powerful than 
the living people who sought relief from intolerable evils. 
Even the cities set up similar divided governments and let 
real estate, traction, and utility interests domineer them al- 
most at will. In such a system great bankers, railway build- 
ers, and industrial leaders governed the United States quite 
as completely as ever the owners of great plantations in the 



1 Croly's "Marcus Hanna — His Life Work, " New York, 1912, and Samuel W. Pennypacker's 
'Autobiography," New York, 1918, give evidence of this at many points. 



THE GREAT STAGE 67 

South had governed. One thinks of CoUis P. Huntington, 
J. P. Morgan, and Stephen B. Elkins and of the days when 
their representatives were such powerful figures in Congress, 
in legislatures and city governments; of the challenge which 
Roscoe Conkling, the Republican boss of New York, gave in 
the Senate to President Garfield and of the enforced sur- 
render of President Cleveland to the bankers of New York 
in 1895.1 

It was a magnificent evolution. It must have been a joy 
to the man of affairs to live in those thirty years which fol- 
lowed the death of Lincoln. Fortunes piled high upon for- 
tunes. The scattering millionaires of 1860 multiplied till 
they were like the sands of the sea in number. INI^n travelled 
first in special cars, luxuriously fitted out, then in special 
trains with private diners, parlour cars, smokers, and with 
liveried servants to attend their wants. They built yachts 
that only monarchs like ^Yilliam II could rival. Their 
palaces occupied blocks and double blocks in the great cities, 
costing often millions of dollars and requiring more than 
princely incomes to keep them going. Not only in the cities 
did these mansions rise. In the favoured parts of New Eng- 
land, in the Adirondacks, or upon the high ridges of Pennsyl- 
vania beautiful summer homes and vast private parks ad- 
vertised the presence of men it were worth while for ordinary 
mortals to cultivate. The riches of the earth were pouring 
year after year into the narrow region which the census 
takers know as the industrial belt. New York City carried 
half the bank deposits of the country and her bankers issued 
ukases to the people of all industries.- The treasury of the 
United States feared to act independently of half a dozen 



•The contract which the President was rompelled to sign will be found in W. J. Bryan, 
"First Battle," Chicago, 1896, p. 134. 
^Carl Hovey, "The Life Storj of J. Pierpont Morgan," New York, 1911, Chaps. VIII-XI. 



68 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Eastern financiers.^ Country merchants far and near en- 
deavoured to have their names on the books of these elect of 
the world; little bankers in every town and city scraped to- 
gether as much money as possible in order to maintain big 
balances in Wall Street; clergymen learned the law from real 
masters rather than from musty books said to come from a 
certain mountain in ancient Palestine; and universities were 
very loth to fall into ill favour with the only men of power in 
the country. 2 What else could men do? They were caught 
in a system, as the people of the old South had been caught 
in the slavery system. 

Yet forces were forging for an emancipation. Conditions 
were becoming so hard that men, American men at least, 
would not endure them. Every year from 1866 to 1896 the 
returns of the farms of the South and West declined in pur- 
chasing power, although an increasing volume of output was 
the rule. The price of wheat fell from $2.50 a bushel to 
sixty cents; corn from $1.50 to forty cents; and cotton from 
forty cents a pound to five or six cents. A vicious eco- 
nomic law seemed to be operating to the disadvantage of 
those who furnished the country with the essentials of life 
and to the infinite advantage of those who set up the ma- 
chinery of modern society. Westerners and Southerners 
had opposed and fought national debts, banks, and railroads 
many times during the period, but fighting separately or 
without persistence they had not effected any change. In 
1880 they thought to capture the machinery of the Demo- 
cratic party which had been demoralized in the Greeley 
campaign of 1872 and which had in part deserted the farmers 

'A fair picture of representative men of this class may be seen in "The Memoirs of Henry 
Villard," 1904; in E. P. Oberholtzer's, "Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War," 1907; and in 
Miss Ida Tarbcll's " History oF the Standard Oil Company," 1904. 

'Henry Adams shows in "The Education o' Henry Adams," Boston, 1918, what the dilem- 
na of the intellectuals was. 



THE GREAT STAGE 69 

in 1876. They failed. The Republicans, appealing always 
to the great name of Lincoln and more intimately industrial 
in leadership, were beyond the hope of capture.^ 

If one endeavoured to bring the Democratic party to the 
work of social reform, the cry was immediately made that 
narrow-minded Southerners and wicked rebels would ruin the 
country; if the progressive Republicans proposed child- 
labour laws or a national education bill, Southern men scented 
danger at once to their budding industrial communities or to 
that sacred shibboleth of state rights on which so many poli- 
tical battles had been fought and won. Again, if Eastern men 
like George William Curtis proposed any reform in the civil 
service, Westerners had their serious doubts; and if Western 
men sought to replace tariff laws by income taxes, Easterners 
shrieked, "long-haired radicalism." Moreover, interests 
and prejudices were so fixed that any real move toward a 
redemocratizing of the country was likely to bring on an 
economic panic, one of the terrors of both organized capital 
and organized labour. Was there ever a more complex 
situation? 

But into this complex and tangled situation William 
Jennings Bryan, son of an Illinois judge and a protege of 
Lyman Trumbull, Lincoln's friend of the Civil War period, 
plunged with all the enthusiasm of youth. Bryan was 
essentially a provincial, a farmer, a Westerner of Southern 
ancestry, a devotee of the old American ideals as expressed 
in the Declaration of Independence and as lived in farmer 
communities. Bryan not only believed in equality, he prac- 
tised it. And he felt the heavy pressure of the industrial 
system upon agricultural life and ideals as every other Wes- 
terner who was not a beneficiary of the system felt it. He 
was gifted with a power of direct and earnest speech un- 

'One needs only to read the reports of coumiittees of Congress in 1912 to see the difficulties. 



70 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

paralleled in America since Patrick Henry; and he was a 
handsome man of striking appearance and of extraordinary 
personal magnetism. Honesty sat upon his very counte- 
nance. He gripped simple men to him in life-long devotion. 
He had a lively part in the great anti-tariff campaign of 
1890 and went himself to Congress in that year winning in 
Washington a high place among the leaders of the Demo- 
cratic party. But Bryan was not a radical. He only urged 
moderate reductions in the tariff, a very reasonable income 
tax law, and effective trust control. But he fell into ill 
favour with President Cleveland over the silver question. 
J. Sterling Morton, member of the Cleveland cabinet from 
Nebraska, became his enemy, and in 1894, when Bryan be- 
came a candidate for the United States Senate, the " admin- 
istration" Democrats of Nebraska did not aid him. He was 
defeated. He became editor of the Omaha World Herald 
and set about organizing the Democrats of the West and 
South upon the money question, an issue on which West and 
South had endeavoured to unite since 1866. His aim was 
to control the Democratic national convention which was to 
meet in Chicago on July 7, 1896. He travelled and spoke 
in every state of the Mississippi Valley and in Texas. Men 
received him with open arms. Southerners looked to him as 
to a long-promised deliverer. The young and growing 
Populist party, as well as a large element of the Republicans, 
looked upon him as their leader. It speedily became plain 
that he would be a power in the convention, if not its master. 
The Cleveland Democrats of Nebraska managed to defeat 
him as a candidate for appointment as a delegate in a way 
that old politicians know so well how to apply. But the 
Bryan men sent him to Chicago as the leader of a contesting 
delegation. He and his friends defeated the national Demo- 
cratic committee in their effort to organize the convention. 



THE GREAT STAGE 71 

Bryan was seated in the convention and he delivered the 
"cross of gold speech" and won the nomination for the pres- 
idency on the vote of an overwhelming majority of the 
delegates. '^ Free silver was made the major plank in the 
Democratic platform. The machinery of the party was 
taken from the control of the Eastern men, from the bosses 
who had defeated Cleveland's tariff reform and then turned 
upon Bryan at Chicago.' 

A campaign followed that has become famous in American 
history. The evolution which Bryan and his friends had 
tried to bring about under Cleveland was about to turn 
into a revolution like that which placed Andrew Jackson and 
his "rough necks" in charge of the country in 1829. Bryan 
revived the touring method of Henry Clay, the first great 
Westerner in politics. John Hay, badly frightened, said^ that 
he made the same speech a dozen times a day and attacked 
every man who wore a clean shirt. He certainly stirred the 
East as it had not been stirred since Jackson. New York 
he pronounced the "enemy's country," which was not incor- 
rect. Professor Wilson said of the movement: "Do not be 
afraid, the people mean no harm; they long for a righteous 
social system."^ What made Easterners so uneasy was the 
simple, axiomatic way in which the "Boy Orator" proved 
everything to be so simple. The tariff was a system by which 
some men keep their hands in other men's pockets. The 
trusts should be abolished off-hand. The Supreme Court, 
which had descended into the political arena and annulled 
the income tax law, in whi^h Bryan had been so much in- 



iThe story is nowhere better told than in Jryan's" First Battle," 65, 156-67, 188-209. 
'One does well to study the preliminary struggle of the Bryan men of 1896 and compare the 
facts with those which preceded the assembling of the Republican convention of 1912. 
'William R. Thayer. "Life of John Hay," Boston, 1915, II, 131. 
♦See above. Chapter II, p. 42. 



72 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

lerested, must be reformed. It was the way Lincoln talked 
about the court; but men had forgotten that. Moreover, 
Bryan seemed to carry the Bible in his head. Its language 
was as familiar to him as it was to his admirers. He was the 
very voice of that old Americanism which went to church 
regularly and sang the hymns of the Wesley s. He was a 
political George Whitefield come to life again. It was a hard 
thing to hold the Republicans in line. Bolting Republicans 
and the Populist party nominated Bryan for the presidency. 
It looked as though nothing could stem the tide of what was 
then thought to be radicalism. It was thought for a time 
that McKinley, the Republican candidate, must take the 
field. But, although McKinley was a seasoned campaigner, 
such a dangerous step was not risked. It proved safer to 
have the railroads carry doubting voters to the home of the 
candidate. It looked like a hopeless case for the Republicans 
all summer. The South was solid beyond a peradventure. 
The W^est seemed to be on fire^ with enthusiasm for the new 
leader. 

Frightened as they had never before been frightened, the 
industrial leaders rallied at the end of the summer about 
Marcus Alonzo Hanna. They gave him carte blanche and 
money variously estimated from four to six million dollars. 
He sent out speakers; he sent out house-to-house campaigners 
with money in their pockets; he organized voters to be sent 
into doubtful districts on election day; and he raised the 
effective cry that Bryan was stirring men to class conscious- 
ness.2 

In such a crisis it could not be expected that the leaders 



'A naive account of it may be found in J. B. Foraker's "Notes of a Busy Life," Cincinnati, 
1916, and a mature view may be had in W. R. Thayer's " Life of John Hay," II, 128-56. 

• J.A. Woodburn, " Political Parties and Party Problems, " New York, 1914, gives a full account 
of the methods of the campaign. 



THE GREAT STAGE 73 

of Eastern Democratic organizations, like David B, Hill of 
New York and Arthur P. Gorman of Maryland or even Roger 
Sullivan of Illinois, would contribute anything to the success 
of such a man as Bryan. They were of the same economic 
and social kind as Hanna himself. In such a case word 
only has to be passed on to the ward and county leaders 
that the chief is not interested in order to secure the success 
of an opposing party. That is what happened in many 
strategic places in 1896. This is not to say that the free 
silver remedy was the right remedy in 1896.^ It is to say that 
the native stocks, the farmers and village folk of the United 
States, were unfairly prevented from taking charge of the 
government in Washington in that exciting time. 

When the wires brought the news late at night on election 
day that McKinley had been successful, a prayer of earnest 
thanksgiving went up from all the great industrial centres 
of the East while the people of the South almost wept that 
their cause was again lost. It was not a final loss. It was 
only the first of a series of contests which, as we now know, 
were to bring about a new regime, if not a definite setting of 
bounds to that industrialism which Hanna and his friends so 
ably represented. 

Bryan simply announced that it was only the first battle 
and set about perfecting and expanding his great organiza- 
tion for the next presidential election. It was a serious time. 
The country felt that the decision of 1896 was not fairly won 
and historians of eminence have said that the real purpose of 
the people was defeated in that contest. Whether this be 
true or not, the leaders who surrounded McKinley felt that 
the times were very critical. They endeavoured to meet 
the bitter opposition of their opponents by trying to bring 

'After the experiences of the recent great war few men will be found to deny the quantitative 
theory of money which was the essence of the Bryan campaign for free silver. 




74 



J 



THE GREAT STAGE 75 

about better economic conditions. Moreover, there was the 
burning question of Cuba with which both parties in Congress 
seemed ready to play. As so often happens the difficult 
and dangerous domestic situation was avoided by a plunge 
into a new foreign policy.^ The result was the Spanish war, 
the annexation of the Philippines, and a campaign in 1900 
on the question of imperialism on which Bryan was again 
defeated. But although the issue was different the forces 
behind the Administration were industrial and financial, just 
as had been the case in 1896. 

It was the day of the financiers. Trusts were organized 
over night. The Sherman anti-trust law was openly flouted. 
A policy of injunctions against labour movements was 
planned and even practised. The masters of the country 
lived in New York and operated in banks, in railway reor- 
ganizations, and in industrial combinations with scant cour- 
tesy to the Government in Washington.^ The great fortunes 
of the country were hardly taxed at all, while extremely high 
tariff duties laid the burden of government upon the con- 
sumers, that is upon the poorer elements of the population. 

The defeat of Bryan a second time weakened his hold upon 
the Democratic party so seriously that the older elements 
took courage again. The so-called Democratic gold men 
returned to its ranks. The bosses of the East tightened their 
hold on the machines of New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and 
Illinois. The Virginia and the Missouri organizations aban- 
doned the "reformers,'' as indeed they had wished to do long 
before. The price of cotton rose steadily; corn and wheat 
found better markets. Full dinner pails and ever-increasing 

'A strong motive of the Kaiser for setting the world on fire in 1914 was the dangerous situa- 
tion at home. 

'Carl Hovey, "The Life Story of J. Pierpont Morgan,'' Chaps.' X and XI. A friendly view of 
the McKinley regime may be seen in Charles S. Olcott's "Life of William McKinley," Bos- 
ton, 191G. For this subject see Ch. XXIIL 



76 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

hordes of immigrants from the south of Europe broke the 
morale of the great labour organizations whose leaders had all 
along wished to support the farmers. Southern manu- 
facturers began to talk protection, and Western communities 
blamed themselves that they had not "invited" business to 
live among them.^ Men seemed to think the whole country 
might resort to industrial pursuits and thus share the pros- 
perity which tariffs and other legal devices secured to the East. 
Under Eastern leadership, the Democratic party put the 
"crude and provincial" Bryan aside at St. Louis in 1904 
and set up Alton B. Parker as a leader. Thomas Taggart, 
one of the rawest of the bosses, took control of the campaign. 
Roosevelt, who had succeeded McKinley in September, 1901, 
but who insisted upon his devotion to the "great policies" 
of his predecessor, was made the Republican candidate. 
That is, both parties stood for the same thing and only kept 
up a sort of motion show of opposition. Thomas F. Ryan, 
one of the worst of the financial lords of the East, was the god- 
father of the Democratic organization; Edward H. Harriman, 
of Union Pacific fame, played the same role for the Republi- 
cans. Roosevelt made his great business patrons a little 
uneasy by talking the Bryan policies, and Parker made the 
ever-faithful common folk of the South uneasy by suggesting 
the business alliance which had made McKinley president. 
There was a feeling in the atmosphere that the leaders 
of the two great parties might "change partners" after 
the manner of country dances. The provincial West was so 
distraught that its voters actually took to Roosevelt or stayed 
at home. Parker was defeated so disastrously that Eastern 
Democratic bosses realized that all hope of victory with 
one of their kind must be abandoned. 



'The career of William B. Allison, as well as the history of Iowa, illustrates perfectly t^ 
change that took place in the minds of great numbers of men. 



THE GREAT STAGE 77 

Roosevelt took the reins of Government in hand in the 
spring of 1905 with such a personal hand that conserva- 
tives of the McKinley type almost lost their breath. He 
undertook to remedy the ills of provincial America by endors- 
ing the Bryan reforms. He forced the packers of Chicago to 
improve their ways, although he did not touch their monop- 
oly; he compelled railroad corporations to yield their grip 
upon the coal mines of the country, although the courts 
undid this work. He threatened to enforce the Sherman 
anti-trust law. Roosevelt was a terror. He secured the 
passage of his measures by Democratic votes; and Bryan was 
reduced to the necessity of declaring that the President had 
stolen his political clothes. Still, the new leader did not 
propose to abandon the industrial groups of the country. 
He tried to moderate their demands; he undertook to ride 
two horses at the same time. And when his second term 
was about to close, he was reduced to the necessity of vio- 
lating the third-term precedent or of finding a Republican who 
could continue to ride two horses. Mr. Taft was chosen for 
the task. Taft did not even essay the role. He concluded 
to take the side of the McKinley battalions, then led by Sena- 
tor Aldrich and Speaker Joseph G. Cannon. The result was 
a tariff reform In 1910 which angered the country as it had 
not been angered since 1890. The palliative of a corporation 
tax of some real promise did not satisfy.^ 

When Roosevelt came back in 1910 from his sojourn 
in Africa and Europe, revolution was in the air as it had been 
in 1896. The recent spring elections in many cities showed 
that the Republican leaders were losing their grip upon the 
country. Roosevelt took active part in the autumn elections, 
but an overwhelming Democratic majority was returned 



•An admirable account ot the decade following 1907 may be found in Frederic A. Okr'; 
">'alional Progress," New York, 1918. 



78 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

to the national House of Representatives. The country did 
not like Mr. Taft. It did like Roosevelt if one might judge 
from the reception which was given him whenever he made 
a public appearance. From 1911 to 1912 Roosevelt was 
making up his mind what he should do to save the country 
from the Democratic radicalism which seemed about to up- 
set everything. But President Taft would not decline a 
renomination as the ex-President seemed to think he ought 
to do. Senator La Follette undertook to organize a move- 
ment aimed at the control of the next national Republican 
convention, just as Bryan had done in the Democratic party 
in 1895-6. La Follette was quite as radical as Bryan had 
ever been and he, too, appealed to the provincials of the West 
to overthrow industrialism. 

In the face of such a menace the Eastern Republicans of the 
older order rallied to Taft and insisted upon his candidacy 
before the Chicago convention of 1912. Senators Root, 
Lodge, Penrose, and Crane made up the inner council of the 
Taft wing of the party; Mr. Barnes, the boss of New York, 
became a sort of general manager for the movement. Under 
these circumstances, Roosevelt decided to enter into a con- 
test with his former protege for the Republican nomination. 
He quickly snuffed out the La Follette movement and gath- 
ered about him a few very able industrial leaders like George 
W.Perkins, Daniel Hanna, and Senator Oliver of Pennsylvania. 
That is, he endeavoured once again to ride two horses at the 
same time. It was hardly possible for him to do otherwise, 
for he was not a people's man, as Bryan was, or as La Follette 
wished to be. His role must be like that of Henry Clay, 
that of a compromiser. He wished to have plebiscites, not 
free elections and a frank dependence upon majority de- 
cisions. He knew history too well not to recall how often 
popular majorities had been obtained for doubtful causes. 



THE GREAT STAGE 79 

It was said of him by at least one spokesman of big business 
that he was the only man who could ride the popular storm 
and yet do nothing. 

With Taft and Roosevelt dividing the strength of the 
Republican party and each claiming to be the successor of 
Lincoln, the Democrats had their chance. But Bryan having 
been beaten in 1908 as Parker had been in 1904, it was evident 
that the leaders of that party must find a new man, or Roose- 
velt might again sweep the country. There was no eminent 
Democrat in the West but Bryan, and no experienced Demo- 
crat in the East of any sort. The South had no chance what- 
ever, even if there had been a real leader there. Since Bryan 
was out of the question, it was "up to" the bosses of the 
East to name the candidate. Would they, like the Western 
Republican bosses of 1860, offer a Lincoln? That was not 
to be expected; yet there was Woodrow Wilson, the stone re- 
jected of the Princeton builders — the man whom destiny or 
luck had in store. How he came to be put upon the "great 
stage," as he once described the country, must now be stud- 
ied and made plain. 



CHAPTER V 
FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 

THE nomination of Woodrow Wilson for the presidency 
of the United States in 1912 is one of the miracles which have 
marked the course of American history. Wilson was a 
composite American, born, he himself has said, of Scotch 
peasant forebears; he was a Southern man living in the heart 
of the East, but without love for the hustling, materialistic, 
life of that crowded region which was about to drive him out 
of his university atmosphere; and he was in political and 
social philosophy rather more an English Liberal than an 
American Democrat. He was a follower of Burke and Bage- 
hot as well as of Jefferson and Lincohi. Yet he did take sides 
in American politics. He hated the protective tariff, al- 
though he would not immediately abolish it; he believed that 
the Federal government stood in dire need of radical reform, 
yet he loved the Constitution and dreaded change for any 
but the gravest reasons. He was withal a man of learning, 
and as such loved the quiet ways of universities and their 
better traditions. He thought liberally but in terms of the 
ages rather than in terms of the present emergency. He was, 
moreover, a prominent Presbyterian, a leader in the local as 
well as the national church, as befitted the head of Princeton 
University. 

How could such a man be chosen to lead one of the great 
political parties in a national campaign, and how could he 
compound with many rivals and competitors in such a race 

80 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 31 

and then set up an harmonious cabinet for a national ad- 
ministration? The answers to these questions came quickly 
in 1912-13. A certain New York editor played a curious but 
important part in the process. 

Colonel George Harvey, editor of Harper's Weekly and 
the North American Review, both generally supposed to 
be "Morgan" periodicals, undertook to make Wilson the 
nominee of the Democratic party both in 1908 and in 1912. 
It was Harvey's especial task to interest conservative Demo- 
crats in the president of Princeton. There can be no doubt 
that he was well fitted for the undertaking. He was a wel- 
come and an influential member of the leading clubs in New 
York; he had close relations with the great figures of Ameri- 
can finance; he drove a trenchant pen and managed very im- 
portant agencies of publicity. He was close to the Morgans; 
he entertained celebrities at elaborate dinners; he was a 
shrewd judge of political leaders; and there was a sort of 
assurance about him that made people think him a power- 
ful dispenser of public honours. He essayed to play the king- 
maker's role. 

The editor of Harper's Weekly came into touch with 
Wilson when the latter was inaugurated president of Prince- 
ton in June, 1903. It was indeed a memorable occasion. 
Many of America's rich men were present including the elder 
Morgan. Ex-President Cleveland was a leading figure of the 
ceremony. President Harper of the then new University 
of Chicago was present. And James H. Harper of the New 
York publishing firm,^ Laurence Hutton, Mark Twain, 
and the genial worshipper of things as they are, Richard 
Watson Gilder, also honoured the occasion with their wit 
and their hearty approval of the young university man. 
The address of Wilson won Harvey's hearty endorsement. 

'Publisher of Wilson's "History of the American People " and other writings. 



82 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

William Inglis, the private secretary of the editor of Harper's, 
later said that Colonel Harvey convinced himself that the 
author of that address could move the masses of common 
folk, and at once bethought him of the future presidency.^ 

But regardless of Colonel Harvey's friendly interest, the 
new president of Princeton quickly made himself felt in semi- 
political circles. Late in November, 1904, when Eastern 
Democrats were sore at heart over the recent sad discom- 
fiture of their leader, Alton B. Parker, he spoke to the 
Virginia Society of New York in earnest and almost solemn 
warning on the subject of political affairs. He won his 
audience as few New York audiences have been won. And 
it was a distinguished audience. Men shouted their approval 
at the end; they waved handorchiefs, called for the speaker, 
until Wilson was compelled to accept the demonstration as 
something quite extraordinary in that latitude. Amongst 
other things, he declared that the party leadership was aim- 
less and even bankrupt. He made it plain that Mr. Brj'^an 
was not entitled, intellectually, to the immense power he 
wielded. But while Wilson was in this critical frame of 
mind, he indicated in an address to the Princeton alumni al- 
most at the same time that he was not entirely of the Eastern 
way of thinking: "America is great because of the spirit of 
her thinkers and not because of the monuments of her 
manufacturers."- 

In 1906, Colonel Harvey definitely made up his mind that 
Wilson was the kind of man he should like to see president 
of the United States. In consequence, he arranged a din- 
ner at the Lotos Club of New York where he introduced 
Wilson as his candidate for the next Democratic nomination. 



>A good account of this occasion will be found in CoUier's Weekly of October 7, 1916. Gilder 
refers to it in his "Letters," 346, giving the names of men present. 

'Brief reports of these addresses will be found in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, p<uaim. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 83 

Harvey concluded his speech with the remark that he was 
tired of voting the Republican ticket and that Wilson would 
enable decent Eastern Democrats to return to the fold. What 
the president of Princeton really thought of the performance 
at the Lotos Club on that February evening has never been 
ascertained. Doubtless he was willing to have people 
press him for the high honour in question. Few Ameri- 
cans have ever resisted such blandishments. 

But Wilson did not change the tone of his public ut- 
terances. It was only a little later that he launched his 
greatest move at Princeton, the plan for the abolition of the 
social clubs. In less than two years he was appealing over 
the heads of trustees and resisting professors to the great un- 
learned public for the democratization of American university 
life. The appeal to the common people in such a matter 
ought to have suggested much to Colonel Harvey. And 
during the same years the social ideals of Wilson were shift- 
ing notably from those of Bagehot and Burke to those of 
Abraham Lincoln. Now, to worship at the shrine of Lincoln 
means little in American public men, for Lincoln is a tradi- 
tion. But for a historian and an American college president 
to say as Wilson did say in those critical years about 1908 
that a second Lincoln would probably be ruined if he were 
compelled to attend an American university was significant 
of change. In a widely quoted address at Chicago in 1909, 
he said in all seriousness: "God send us such men again." 
The follower of contented British Liberalism, with the big 
L, was fast drifting toward the camp of radicalism. 

Yet Colonel Harvey continued his campaign on be- 
half of Woodrow Wilson, "predestined," as he insisted, to 
be the president of the United States. Newspaper sup- 
port in the South, the West, and in New York was organized 
in behalf of the Wilson " boom " St. Clair McKelway of the 



84 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Brooklyn Eagle was won and the New York World asked Har- 
vey to write its editorial in which the academic man was 
held up by that powerful sheet as the proper candidate of the 
party at the St. Louis convention in 1908. Wilson's only 
public comment upon this activity came in a quiet if some- 
what humorous interview in which he said that other politi- 
cal lightning rods were doubtless so much taller than his that 
the electricity would not be attracted to him. 

After the third Bryan defeat it became clear that Harvey's 
work would bear fruit, that Wilson or some other Eastern man 
would most likely be the party nominee in 1912. The break 
up of the Republican solidarity in 1910 made it quite likely 
that the regular Democratic candidate would be the next 
president of the country. Harvey redoubled his energy. 
Wilson doubtless began to realize that the work of 
Harper's Weekly was not a joke. Harvey might, after all, 
become a king-maker. It now became necessary to bring 
Wilson into political office, if possible. New Jersey, tired 
of her bosses and sick of being called the most corrupt of all 
the states, was beginning to bestir herself. There was a 
Republican Progressive movement led by Mr. George L. 
Record; and Joseph P. Tumulty was working with others to 
reform the Democratic party of the state. Could Harvey, 
close as he v, as to the great financial interests of the country, 
induce the New Jersey Democrats to nominate and elect his 
friend Wilson to the governorship? 

That was a delicate matter. Yet it must be done if 
Wilson were ever to be made president of the United States. 
The auspices were certainly bad for this rising Caesar. But 
Harvey was a dauntless man. He was a neighbour of James 
Smith, Jr., one of the worst of all the boss species of the time. 
Smith held a firm grip upon the Democratic machinery. 
But he was hated by all the Bryan Democrats and even by the 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE TRESIDENCi' 85 

Cleveland group. However, Smith was close to Tammany 
Hall and he was a connection of Roger Sullivan, the Demo- 
cratic boss of Illinois. Harvey asked him directly to nomi- 
nate Wilson for governor at the party convention which was 
to meet at Trenton about the middle of September, 1910. 
Smith wished to know the terms of the bond. Harvey could 
not give them. He made it plain that Wilson was not a man 
from whom stipulations could be asked. Besides, it would 
ruin him in the race for the presidential nomination in which 
Smith seems to have shown some interest. 

Harvey visited Wilson. Wilson never said whether he 
would accept a nomination or not if offered. He was aware 
that the best Democrats of the state were bitterly hostile 
to Smith and very skeptical of Harvey. He simply said he 
was greatly interested. In the early summer of 1910, 
Harvey, finding Colonel Henry Watterson in New York 
one week-end, conceived the idea of getting Smith, Watter- 
son, Wilson, and himself about a common table and settling 
the candidacy both for the governorship and the presidency. 
Deal, Harvey's home in New Jersey, was found to be the best 
place. Watterson agreed to a Sunday dinner with Harvey, 
only Wilson seemed little interested. He ran off on a 
slight pretext to Lyme, Connecticut. There Harvey's 
secretary found him about to go to church on that Sunday 
and induced him to get into an automobile and hasten to 
Deal, New Jersey. At the proper time the four men, Wilson^ 
Harvey, Watterson, and Smith, sat down to dinner. Wilson 
knew well that he was playing with fire. He did, however, 
agree to accept the nomination for governor if it could be 
offered him without any promises. The stars were shap- 
ing their course to future events. That summer Smith " lined 
up" the delegates to the Democratic convention in the way 
American bosses usually' do when great matters are afoot. 



80 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Wilson met Harvey once or twice meanwhile. They 
talked over the proposed platform, it seems, in Boston 
and elsewhere. It was understood that Smith might ex- 
ert his influence in the coming campaign but that he was 
not to attempt to become a candidate for any office, particu- 
larly that of United States senator, a position he had dis- 
graced during the second Cleveland administration, from the 
Wilson point of view. The time for the assembling of the 
Democratic convention approached, however, without either 
Harvey or Smith being definitely assured what Wilson would 
do. From all the evidence I have been able to gather, the 
president of Princeton kept a masterly silence and never 
absolutely committed himself to anything except that he 
would accept a nomination if offered and that Smith's ambi- 
tion to return to the Senate was not to be suffered to embar- 
rass the progressive Democratic movement.^ 

When the convention was ready to vote on the nomination 
for the governorship Wilson's name was duly proposed by a 
representative of the machine. It was a unique situation. 
Smith and Harvey were in the convention. There was strong 
opposition to Wilson among the more independent elements 
of the party. Wilson was at his home at Princeton. But the 
nomination was offered in accordance with the wishes of 
Smith and Harvey. Wilson was brought from his home as 
quickly as possible. When he appeared there was doubt 
among many of the delegates whether they had not committed 
themselves in that critical year to a reactionary willing to 
wear the collar of Wall Street. 

At a dramatic moment Wilson said: "I did not seek this 
nomination. I have made no pledges and have given no 
promise. If elected, as I expect to be, I am left free to serve 



' The whole story is well told, although as unfavourably to Wilson as permissible, in Col- 
/i»r'» Wtekly. October 7-81, 1916. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 87 

you with all singleness of purpose. It is a new era when these 
things can be said." The defeated progressive group of the 
convention yielded their doubts when the speech of accept- 
ance was finished. The very tone and ring of Wilson's words 
convinced them that they, and not the bosses, had won that 
strategic contest. 

Little time was lost on the part of the new political leader. 
Wilson promptly resigned the presidency of the University and 
began his campaign for the governorship. It was one of the 
notable canvasses in recent American history and as import- 
ant, in many respects, as were the Lincoln-Douglas debates 
of 1858. New Jersey had been awakened to her lost estate. 
Wilson's nomination by such men as Smith and Harvey was 
proof of the fact, and the new candidate was well aware of 
what was expected of him. He knew his speeches would be 
read all over the East, and that his administration of New 
Jersey's affairs, in the event of his election, would be the 
testing by which the people of the country would determine 
whether he might be elevated to the presidency. Wilson 
rose to the occasion. He was indeed, as we already know, 
one of the best equipped men who had ever been nominated 
for the governorship of one of the states. He had long been a 
Liberal and he was already under the stimulus of the new 
times becoming a radical, a democrat. His speeches were of 
the very best. Wherever he went he was successful in con- 
vincing common men that he was their spokesman. Thou- 
sands of commuters who travelled daily the trains from New 
Jersey into New York City became his ardent advocates. 

When the campaign advanced a little, Mr. George L. 
Record, representative of the Republican insurgents of that 
year, put nineteen searching queries to Wilson — designed 
to test the sincerity of the Democratic leader. Wilson 
answered all with the utmost frankness and added the 



88 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

answer to a twentieth query which was that, if elected 
governor, he would consider himself forever disgraced if he 
"should in the slightest degree cooperate in any such system 
or any such transactions as the boss system describes." 

It was indeed a curious situation. Smith, Nugent, and 
Davis, the Democratic machine leaders, had long cooperated 
with Baird, Stokes, and Kean, the Republican machine men, 
in the practical politics of New Jersey. Wilson owed his 
nomination to the former group. It had been the hope of 
these men, in the troublous times ahead, to place a liberal 
academic man in the governorship and then in the presi- 
dency, trusting to his mere academic character and political 
inexperience to make him either too timid or too conservative 
for the real work of reform. The Republicans relied upon 
their Democratic allies in underground government to save 
the day in the event that they lost control. All knew that 
in 1910 it was necessary for the bosses to put up a candidate 
who had a reputation for reform and high character. Wilson 
had shown both traits. He was as necessary to Smith as to 
Baird. 

Record's questions gave Wilson the very opportunity he 
was seeking. He announced to the people of New Jersey 
that he would never submit himself on any public mat- 
ter to either Democratic or Republican machine for ap- 
proval. What Colonel Harvey and his greater business 
friends in Wall Street thought of this new politician whom 
they had set up for president of the United States has not yet 
been made public. But the older party men of New Jersey 
were distressed beyond the power of speech. They doubtless 
said among themselves what Richard Croker, the former 
Tammany Hall chief, said of Wilson in the public press : "An 
ingrate is no good in politics." 

Was Woodrow Wilson an ingrate? He had all his life 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 89 

condemned the American boss system. He knew perfectly- 
well that most intelligent people felt that their government 
was no longer a democratic government. He knew that the 
methods by which the exploiters of the public ruled were such 
as could not endure publicity. Few public men had, how- 
ever, felt strong enough to make and continue war upon the 
bosses and their methods. Had not Cleveland been ruined 
by a few party bosses in the Senate? Was not President 
Taft then paying the terrible price of having once allowed the 
Republican machine forces to take charge of the proposed 
tariff reform? Wilson simply declared independence. The 
declaration made him governor. And few will deny that it 
was a long step toward the presidency. 

Wilson's election to the governorship was one of the 
bright promises of the year 1910. Real Democrats all over 
the country took notice. His plurality was 49,000 from an 
electorate which two years before had given President Taft 
a plurality of 82,000. It seemed that even a "rock-ribbed" 
Eastern state could be won for democracy if good men could 
ever get nominations. But the surprising result did not stun 
James Smith and his friends. They undertook to persuade 
George Harvey to secure from Wilson his approval for Smith 
to appear before the incoming legislature as a candidate for 
the United States Senate! Harvey is reported' to have 
whistled. Even Harvey knew that a governor of New Jersey 
who smoothed the way to the Senate for such a man as 
Smith could not win the nomination from the next Demo- 
cratic national convention. 

But Smith insisted upon a fight for the Senate. The new 
governor quietly assumed leadership for the party and made 
it plain that neither Smith nor any of the machine leaders of 

'William Inglis in Collier's Weekly, October 21st, says tbat Harrey refused to make the 
request of Wilson. 



90 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

New Jersey could have any disproportionate influence in the 
choice of a new senator or in the shaping of the poHcy of the 
Democratic party. When Smith insisted upon his right to 
be a candidate before the legislature which he thought he had 
himself caused to be elected, Governor-elect Wilson warned 
him that there had been a definite understanding to the con- 
trary, as expressed in a Democratic primary, and added that 
Smith must publicly announce that he would not be a can- 
didate.^ This the irate boss refused to do. A sharp canvass 
of the state ensued in which Wilson made it plain that the 
election of Smith would be a surrender to the evil forces of 
New Jersey life and that it would break the faith of com- 
mon folk in the sincerity of the new movement. When the 
legislature voted. Smith received only four votes. 

Of equal importance in those first critical days of Governor 
Wilson's career was the definite assumption of leadership 
not only for the party majority in New Jersey, but for the 
state as a whole. During the preceding campaign Wilson 
announced that, if elected, he would consider himself the 
"political spokesman and advisor of the people" and that if 
men did not care to have their governor act as the responsible 
head of the people they had best vote against him. That was 
to apply his great principle of responsible leadership to 
American affairs, a principle which he had outlined and 
emphasized in "Congressional Government," his first book 
published some twenty-five years before. At another time 
in American history a governor who thus boldly assumed a 
position not provided by his state constitution must have 
been very sharply attacked. Not so in New Jersey in 1911. 
The invisible government of American commonwealths by 



•The Smith candidacy Is carefully treated in Professor Henry Jones Ford's "Woodrow 
Wilson," 132; and in WilUam Bayard Hale's "Woodrow Wilson," 178-184. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 91 

interested people had gone so far that men were ready every- 
where to try new experiments. 

Governor Wilson was himself a new experiment, the ex- 
periment of choosing the foremost political scientist in the 
country to administer a sore, bedraggled commonwealth. 
But Wilson was no extremist. In his first inaugural he said: 
"It is not the foolish ardour of too sanguine or too radical 
reform that I urge upon you. ... I merely point out 
the present business of progress and serviceable government, 
the next stage on the journey of duty." But the journey of 
progress was just the way that old legislators did not wish to 
go. The majority of the legislature was supposed to be 
Democratic and in sympathy with the governor. They were 
not. The majority of the senate was Republican and re- 
actionary, a remnant of the old New Jersey Republicanism led 
by the Republican bosses. The house was Democratic, but 
a large number of these Democrats were followers of James 
Smith and sore over the defeat of their master. It was a 
mixed situation, such as American methods usually supply 
whenever forward movements are under way. 

At the centre of this legislative situation stood James R. 
Nugent, the acting head of the Democratic organization of 
which Smith was the real and absentee head. He proposed to 
organize the Republican senate and the Democratic machine 
element against the "ingrate" governor and defeat every 
effective move that was made . There were four vital changes 
in the laws of New Jersey which Wilson must press or 
he could not think of himself as serving any useful pur- 
pose. These were the election reform, the employers' li- 
ability, the public utilities, and the corrupt practices bills, 
all of which embodied reforms of far-reaching consequences. 
They were the very essence of the whole movement then 
known as progressive. If applied successfully, New Jersey 



92 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

would become one of the free states of the Union. Of course 
all the interested parties rallied to their respective sides. 
The governor was the one and only promise of success to 
those who had long combated the boss system. James R. 
Nugent became the leader of both Republican and Demo- 
cratic reactionaries. The decision upon these issues would 
practically determine Wilson's success as governor. 

Mr. Nugent asked for a Democratic legislative confer- 
ence on causes in which the party attitude should be deter- 
mined. The promises of the recent campaign were thus to be 
interpreted by the leaders. This conference was called for 
March 8, 1911. W^ilson indicated that he would like to 
attend. It was an unprecedented wish. Without pressing 
the question of his right to do so, the leaders assented. It 
was with much anxiety that they yielded. Wilson appeared 
at the appointed time and place and became at once the 
leader of the conference. He presented his ideas and argued 
his case in a way that broke down the opposition. The 
conference that was designed to defeat his w^hole pro- 
gramme adjourned with a hearty endorsement of his lead- 
ership. Nugent and Smith were completely discomfited 
and the new leadership was triumphant. From that time 
Governor Wilson was the unquestioned spokesman of 
New Jersey, a sort of political miracle in an old, boss- 
ridden community. The new Eastern leader was a national 
challenge. 

Of the details of the administration of New Jersey by 
Woodrow Wilson there is little space here to speak. Within 
two years from the day the new "academic" governor took 
oflBce at Trenton, the laws of the community were so re-made 
that reformers everywhere studied them as models for other 
states. Wilson did not achieve all he wished, for the Re- 
publicans regained control of the legislature in 19l!2 and made 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 93 

a point, during the second year of his administration, to 
thwart and Hmit him as much as possible in order to detract 
from him as a candidate of their opponents for the presidency. 
Their success was small. Wilson made his principle too 
clear for any to misunderstand : a governor or president was 
and must be the leader of his party and his country during 
his term of office. If he went wrong, he could be repu- 
diated in the next election. If his opponents refused to 
support him in a given controversy or upon a vital policy, 
he must go to the people and explain his purposes. If public 
opinion was outspoken and articulate, they must yield or 
suffer his measures to prevail till a test could be made. It 
was responsible leadership, similar to that which has been 
so long practised in England. But since elections are for 
definite terms in the United States, men must be guided by 
the expressions of opinion, informally given; or simply bide 
their time, if in opposition, till an election comes. The 
principle as applied by Wilson involves a very great abilitj'' 
for testing the public will. The leader of this new American 
type must study and know men as only a few Americans have 
studied and known men. Wilson would be a second Jeffer- 
son, or better, perhaps, a second Lincoln. 

With all the world looking on and applauding, with 
Roosevelt breaking the Republican party into halves, the 
astute men in New York who had set Wilson up were con- 
siderably disturbed what to do with their leader. If Bryan 
and his Western "extremists" were to be put aside for 
a worse than Bryan, what profit would it be to them? This 
was the dilemma of George Harvey. He was, moreover, fast 
being deserted by the very men who had helped him nomi- 
nate Wilson. It was only natural. The East wished to de- 
feat the so-called radicalism of the Western wing of the 
Democracy. It could only do so with a progressive leader; 



94 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

but a progressive leader of the East could not stop at any 
half-way house, as Wilson had shown. Harvey continued 
his advocacy through the year 1911. He published editorials 
in Harper s Weekly. He interested editors of Southern 
papers. He made speeches about the "political predestina- 
tion " of Woodrow Wilson. He even endeavoured to win Mr. 
Bryan to the support of Wilson.^ His last appeal for the 
Governor of New Jersey appeared in The Independent, De- 
cember, 1911. It was rather a pathetic case, that of the 
ardent president-maker at the end of that year. Colonel 
Harvey was an earnest champion of the capitalistic forces. 
He was wise enough to see that a liberal conservative was the 
only leader who could long preserve capitalism as then set up. 
Wilson had seemed to him the only hope of conservatism. 
But Wilson was a man who grew constantly as he saw the 
great contest open before him. He was a conservative, but 
an able, honest leader who realized, as few other Eastern 
men could possibly realize anything, that the people of 
the United States would not long endure the kind of capi- 
talism which had broken President Taft. Those last years 
at Princeton had shown him much. Every day in the gov- 
ernorship of New Jersey showed him the only road an honest 
leader could take. 

The break with Harvey and his friends had to come. 
Somehow an invitation of Harvey to Governor Wilson to 
meet for a conference at the home of the former at Deal, 
where Wilson, Harvey, Watterson, and Smith had met that 
summer evening in 1910, was declined. Harvey felt in- 
stinctively that the Governor was no longer simply his can- 
didate. Wilson knew that nominations to office were 
affairs of the people and not of groups of personal friends. 
On December 7th, the two met in a New York club in the 

•WUliam Inglis in Collier's U'eeklu, October <i\, 1916. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 95 

presence of mutual friends and Governor Wilson was asked 
directly if the activity of Colonel Harvey was thought to be 
harmful. The reply was in the affirmative and the re- 
lations of the two men ceased from that day. 

But Wilson was already far past the stage in his develop- 
ment as a leader when he could be called simply a candidate 
for the presidency. A great national stock-taking was in 
process that winter. Wilson was everywhere counted as an 
asset or as a liability. University men were recounting his 
struggles in behalf of a more democratic university life. 
Business men, not caught in the drift of anti-social com- 
binations, hoped from him a leadership which might emanci- 
pate common folk from the overgrown businesses that made 
men into machines and tended to force American life into 
a new feudalism as deadening as ever was that of half a thou- 
sand years before. Farmers of the South and West, repre- 
sentatives of that older America that was Protestant and 
orthodox, looked hopefully to the Presbyterian elder who was 
making New Jersey a better commonwealth. 

Calls came to him from Wisconsin where Republicans 
were fast becoming progressives, from Texas where the old 
Democracy was almost democratic, from the nearer West, the 
old state of Pennsylvania, and even from New England to 
visit them and make evidence of the faith that was in him. 
Wilson could hardly find time to be governor of New Jersey 
for the pressing calls of other groups of people who hoped that 
a really wise man of the East had arisen. He was the hope 
of so many forward-looking men that he could not for a mo- 
ment allow personal relations with Eastern friends to deaden 
that greater influence which society had given him. 

But there were other leaders of the Democratic party. 
Champ Clark, an old Bryan lieutenant, Speaker of the 
national House of Representatives; Governor Harmon, a 



96 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

member of the second Cleveland cabinet; and Oscar Under- 
wood, author of the proposed Democratic tariff of 1912, which 
was to take the place of the Payne-Aldrich tariff that had 
tried Mr. Taft so sorely. These were all men of national 
prominence. They were of the older class of public men 
who had not seen that "handwriting on the wall" which 
Wilson had made Harvey see. They still spoke the lan- 
guage of Cleveland's day and expected the nomination to the 
presidency from the Democratic party upon the give-and- 
take plan so common to men who have lived long in the at- 
mosphere of Washington. Not one of them had studied the 
science of government; hardly one of them knew more of 
American history than one gets from experience and ob- 
servation.' In such a group Wilson was easily the master. 
One man only gave both Wilson and the group of old- 
fashioned men who were his competitors serious thought. 
That man was Mr. Bryan, the leader of three national cam- 
paigns. What would Bryan do? 

Before the primary struggle of that year drew to a close 
Clark, Harmon, and Underwood were understood to have 
permitted an agreement among their lieutenants, whereby 
their interests were to be pooled as against Wilson who was 
very popular with the people. It was a tangled situation. 
Harmon's influence was strong in the North among Bourbons 
of every party. In the South his cause was urged by Joseph 
W. Bailey of Texas, who for the moment controlled the party 
machinery of that state. Clark might have been a pro- 
gressive leader, but he had become the choice and candidate 
of the Missouri machine of which Senators Stone and Reed 
and David R. Francis, a former member of the Cleveland 
cabinet, were the managers. Clark's principal manager in 



'Brief accounts of this campaign will be found in F. L. Paxson's "The New Nation," Bostoi 
1915. 335-38; and in F. A. Ogg's "National Progrese," 197-207. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 97 

Virginia and the upper South was Senator Martin, closely 
affiliated with Thomas F. Ryan, the New York capitalist. 
And Bailey was close to both the Missouri and the Virginia 
machines. Hence neither Clark nor Harmon could stray far 
from the old conservative path. 

Representative Underwood had the strongest hold upon 
the lower South, even dividing Georgia with Wilson, and 
aligning himself there with the reactionary wings of the 
Democratic party led by ex-Governor Brown of Georgia and 
Senator Bankhead of Alabama. Harmon, Clark, and Under- 
wood held the strongholds of the South, the citadel of the 
Democratic party. Only through the management and faith 
of two men did Wilson get any substantial official party sup- 
port in that broad region where he was surely the most popular 
of all the candidates. These two men were Colonel Edward 
M. House and Josephus Daniels. House had sometimes 
been a prominent factor in Texas, and Daniels had been a 
powerful editor and supporter of Bryan in North Carolina. 
Now the people of those states were then, and remain, rather 
more democratic than those of the other Southern states. 
Through good or evil fortune they had loved William J, 
Bryan and what is more important they had voted for 
him. 

Colonel House, who spent a great deal of his time in New 
York, understood that Wilson could never break the power of 
machine politics in the South so long as Colonel Harvey was 
his chief sponsor. He was perhaps the first to build a pass- 
able bridge between the Presbyterian elder of Princeton and 
the Presbyterian elder of Lincoln, Nebraska. If Wilson 
crossed that bridge, he would not only further the cause of 
democracy as he professed it; he would begin to foil the 
machinations of his rivals in the South. Although neither 
Wilson went all the way to Lincoln nor Bryan all the way to 



98 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Trenton, the friends of the two men all over the South united. 
House won away from Bailey the Texas delegation to the 
famous Baltimore convention. And the Texas delegation 
was the strongest nucleus of Wilson support in the Baltimore 
convention from the first to the last day of its stormy sessions.^ 

In similar manner Josephus Daniels won and held the 
North Carolina politicians to the Wilson flag and made 
constant inroads upon the official opinion of Virginia and 
South Carolina, which last came over wholly to the same 
cause before the struggle reached its critical stage. Wilson 
was born in Virginia. Ordinarily that fact would have won 
him some support from the politicians of the state; but at 
that time the Old Dominion was under the sinister influence 
of Thomas F. Ryan who could never endure the sight of a 
progressive in any party. Virginia resisted Wilson to the last 
and seemed to be proud of her apparent alliance with Tam- 
many Hall, although two or three of her delegates to the 
Baltimore convention revolted against the Martin-Ryan 
influence. But Texas and the two Carolinas made a con- 
siderable element of the South. In the East, Wilson had a 
following in New England ; he readily won the Pennsylvania 
delegation; and, after the final defeat of the Smith machine, 
he might have had the support of the New Jersey politicians 
for the asking. That made a respectable showing. But as the 
next Democratic convention would be organized it would 
take more than six hundred of a total thousand delegates to 
nominate him. He did not have hopes of more than half that 
number in the early days of 1912. 

It was now that Colonel Harvey turned quickly upon his 
formerly "predestined Woodrow Wilson" and endeavoured 



'A careful reading of events of "The Real Colonel House," by Howden Smith, New York, 
1918, and conversations with some of the men who led the Wilson campaign art the support! 
for these paragraphs. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 99 

to win for Clark two thirds of the convention before it 
gathered. It required two thirds to nominate according to 
the custom of seventy years. Harvey made almost as strong 
a campaign for Clark as he had formerly made for Wilson. 
Tammany Hall, James Smith Jr., and Roger Sullivan were all 
enthusiastic for the man from Missouri. At the very 
moment when the friends of Wilson were about to bring 
Bryan and Wilson together, Adrian H. Joline, a former 
trustee of Princeton Universitj'' and a bitter opponent, as we 
already know, published a letter of 1907 in which Wilson had 
expressed the hope that "somehow we may knock Mr. 
Bryan into a cocked hat." From the context of the letter it 
was clear that the president of Princeton then thought Bryan 
a doubtful asset both to the party and to the country.^ 

The letter appeared a day or two before the leaders of the 
Democratic party were to gather at a widely advertised 
public dinner in Washington and discuss their programme. 
Both Bryan and Wilson were to be present. Would the two 
men make a scene."* Josephus Daniels met Bryan on the 
train coming from Florida and prepared the way for a 
friendly meeting. At the dinner nothing happened, except 
that Bryan put his arm about Wilson's shoulders in the pres- 
ence of the newspaper men and the assembled leaders of 
the party. The mischief that might have wrecked one of the 
greatest programmes of American history fell harmless to the 
ground. There was, however, no alliance between Wilson, 
the only progressive Democrat of the campaign, and Brv^an, 
the one prominent leader who was not a candidate. Both 
Bryan and his closest Western friends kept their counsels 
till the very day of the gathering in Baltimore. They saw 
clearly enough that Harmon and Clark and Underwood 



lA copy of the letter will be found in "The Real Colonel House, " by Arthur Howden Smith, 
p. 100. 



100 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

were the favourites of the bosses, that is, of the great interests, 
but former personal relations and the exigencies of politics 
seemed to require silence. 

The great silent masses of the people, in so far as these can 
stop their ploughs and their hammers to think, were watching 
the strange developments. It was indeed a situation fast 
getting beyond the pov/ers of the men who generally "fix 
things" in our life. Clark, a mere boy in the great complex 
of American life, had a majority of the delegations to the 
convention. But Underwood and Harmon held each a 
sufficient block of votes to deny Clark the nomination on the 
first ballot. Either of them might have withdrawn if they 
had not known that Wilson, and not Clark, would have been 
the beneficiary of such a move. Although Harmon, Clark, 
and Underwood all stood for exactly the same thing, not one 
of them could move without definitely surrendering the 
nomination to the one man whom all feared. Under these 
circumstances, Colonel Harvey, thinking to tip the balances 
at last in favour of Clark and reaction, published in his 
Weekly, a few days before the convention assembled, a great 
black-and-white map of the country showing almost two 
thirds of the districts committed to the nomination of Clark. 
The former friend thought he had his sweet revenge for the 
plain talk of the preceding December. It was another Joline 
letter.i 

But the "predestination of Woodrow Wilson" seemed to 
be past defeat. The passions of men as well as the im- 
ponderables of politics, played in his favour. The great 
Republican convention met in Chicago about the middle of 
June. The national executive committee of the party 
gathered a week beforehand, as the Democratic committee 



'See issue of June 22, 1912; Harper's Weekly during the winter and spring of 1912 should>b« 
re.td hy every student of the period. 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 101 

had done in 1896,^ to overrule the will of the majority of the 
membership of the party who wished the renomination of 
Roosevelt. Roosevelt, like the Bryan of 1896, had canvassed 
the country and apparently won a majority of delegates; only 
in 1912 it was called a primary campaign whereas in 1896 it 
was a radical movement which could not be suppressed and 
which was conducted in extra-legal form. The Republican 
national committee ruthlessly unseated Roosevelt delegates 
in favour of contesting Taf t delegates as the Democratic com- 
mittee had done with Bryan delegates sixteen years before. 
When the convention assembled it was safely "Taft" and 
in charge of Messrs. Root, Crane, Barnes, and Lodge. The 
bosses would have their way and take no chances with any 
doubtful tactics. 

The anger of Roosevelt rose to the n^^ power. Break- 
ing all precedents, he journeyed to Chicago; denounced the 
national committee as having stolen the votes of the conven- 
tion, and his former friend, Taft, as the receiver of stolen 
property .2 The country was excited and angry. The head- 
lines of the newspapers everywhere carried the news from 
Chicago in true war-time style. Colonel Harvey was in the 
Chicago convention and wrote to his Weekly attacks upon 
Roosevelt that descended to the level of diatribes. Mr. 
Bryan was also in the Chicago convention reporting the 
Republican quarrel to a syndicate of papers in true reporter's 
style, without indicating his inward glee that the great rival 
party of forty years' successful history was going to pieces. 
Colonel House, now Wilson's closest adviser, declared that 
Roosevelt was his best aid in the coming Baltimore gathering. 
The outcome at Chicago was a complete rupture of the party. 

'Ante pp. 92-93. 

-A series of articles in the World't Work duriq^ die summer of 1010 shows well the BooMvelt 
conduct and point of view. 



102 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Taft was the nominee, but Roosevelt announced that there 
would be another convention which meant his own nomina- 
tion as the head of a new or progressive movement. The 
Democrats would nominate the next president, just as the 
Republicans had been sure of doing when they had put for- 
ward Lincoln at Chicago in 1860, after a similar break-up of 
the old Democratic party of Southern domination. 

The Democrats gathered in Baltimore on June 25th. The 
national committee was reactionary. It set up Alton B. 
Parker, a Tammany Hall man, for temporary chairman. 
The move was intended to make Clark the nominee. It was 
plain to the country that the Democratic bosses intended to 
do in Baltimore what the Republican bosses had done in 
Chicago. The people of the country became more angry 
than they had been during the contest in Chicago. There 
had not been so much excitement in a preliminary presiden- 
tial campaign since 1860. There was not so much excite- 
ment even then. Bryan entered the Baltimore convention 
as a sort of St. George going out to fight the dragon, and with 
the hearty support of the people of all parties who sent him 
scores of thousands of telegrams urging him to do his utmost. 
The presence of Thomas F. Ryan, as a delegate from Vir- 
ginia, was ominous. Bryan, with the enthusiastic support of 
the country, defeated the machine forces, and the permanent 
organization of the convention showed the friends of Wilson 
to be in charge, although their instructions from local con- 
ventions still bound many of them to Clark or Harmon or 
Underwood. 

The early ballots proved that the fight was between Clark 
and Wilson. Upon every roll call, Tammany Hall cast the 
solid vote of New York for Harmon. When, after many 
weary repetitions of the count, Bryan offered resolutions op- 
posing any candidate who received the support of the 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 103 

"privilege-hunting class" and demanding the expulsion of 
Ryan and his group from the convention, there was pan- 
demonium in the hall. But the vote upon the resolutions 
showed the temper of the delegates. The nomination of 
Clark was thenceforward hopeless. Bryan's role as an ex- 
ponent of outraged public opinion and as a master of great 
conventions was superbly played. The whole nation warmed 
to him, although it was clear that the country did not wish 
him to be the nominee of the Democrats. When he gave his 
influence finally and openly to Wilson the struggle was closed. 
Wilson received the necessary two-thirds vote and was pro- 
claimed the candidate. 

The forward-looking element of the party had won. 
Messrs Bryan, House, who was, however, not in Baltimore, 
Josephus Daniels, and young William F. McCombs had won 
the esteem of the people. The old party of Jefferson and 
Jackson and of the campaign of 1896 was still in existence. 
Its leader stood, in spite of party names, in the place where 
events put Lincoln in 1860. Would Wilson, the professor 
and the moderate Liberal of other days, rise to the great oc- 
casion? 

The people of the country were not certain. Many fine 
spirits of every section did not think so. History and sec- 
tional bias and family pride blinded them to the facts. It 
was then, as now, a hard thing for the representative of an 
old Northern family to vote with the party of the solid South, 
the party which John Hay so unjustly denounced as beneath 
contempt in 1900. These good people, disgusted with the 
conduct of their regular party leaders, turned to Colonel 
Roosevelt who made an evangelical campaign, though not 
himself permeated with the true social gospel. Wilson was 
the beneficiary of the Roosevelt movement. He was elected, 
like Lincoln in 1860 and Jefferson in 1800, because of the split 




lOi 



FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 105 

in the opposing party. But he received only 42 per cent, 
of the vote of the country, although his electoral vote was 
overwhelming.^ Wilson did not reveal himself fully during 
the campaign. His speeches showed a thoughtful, cautious 
mind, not sure how far his countrymen wished to go. Roose- 
velt seemed to be the real radical. Was Wilson to revert to 
the "safe and sane" ways of Cleveland or did he really under- 
stand.'' Those are questions which his measures, not his 
speeches, must show. At any rate, a new man was about to 
become president. 



•Ogg. "National Progress." pp. 198.iM)8. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE PROBLEM 

THERE was indeed a new man in the White House in 
March, 1913. There was need of a new man. The country 
had been under agitation since 1893. But during the whole 
Taft presidency the pubHc excitement had been intense. 
The Lorimer scandal of 1910-11 was followed closely by an ex- 
pose of the mismanagement of the Department of the Interior. 
The methods of the tariff legislation of the same session of 
Congress were hardly less offensive to large elements of the 
country. And in 1912 a series of investigations of former 
election campaigns showed the utmost cynicism on the part 
of party leaders and great business men^ in regard to the re- 
lations of men of wealth to the oflBcers of government. On 
the very eve of President Wilson's inauguration, the "Pujo 
committee of the House of Representatives showed how 
nearly a few great bankers of New York controlled the credit 
operations of the nation. 

Men were everywhere intensely anxious about the growing 
power of corporations and individual capitalists over the 
common life of the people. The railroads, with their in- 
timate connections with all business affairs, were under the 
guidance of a few bankers in New York City; all the greater 
steamship lines to foreign countries were similarly directed 
from New York or London; one third of the bank deposits 



"Testimony of cx-Presidcnl Roosevelt and others licforc committees of Congress in 191« 
made this perfectly plain. 

106 



THE PROBLEM 107 

of the United States was likewise under the same control, 
while five sixths of all the bank deposits of the country were 
lodged in the cities of the industrial district; the steel busi- 
ness, the cotton and woollen manufacturers, and practically 
all of the vast oil properties of the continent received orders 
from New York overlords. Every great business organiza- 
tion, like the American Bankers' Association or the Anthra- 
cite Coal Carriers, had its head; while all the better-organized 
undertakings, uniting with the various chambers of com- 
merce of all the cities, had just formed a United States Cham- 
ber of Commerce, the better to guide and regulate business 
of every sort and bring pressure to bear upon government. 

Mr. Wilson himself said during the campaign of 1912 
that "a comparatively small number of men control the raw 
material, the water-power, the railroads, the larger credits 
of the country and, by agreements handed around among 
themselves, they control prices."^ There was nowhere else 
in the world such a powerful industrial and financial group. 
William II of Germany was not so much more powerful 
than J. P. Morgan of New York. And everywhere in 
the world business men and governments respected, even 
feared, the leaders of American industrial life. 

Smaller folk in the United States had long been accustomed 
to a similar respect or fear. Whether village bankers wished 
or not, they kept balances in New York. Southern cotton 
brokers and Western buyers of pigs instinctively knew the 
value of a fair name in Wall Street. Men might not like the 
regime, but they knew that American business had far out- 
stripped all other business in the world. Any limiting of its 
influence or breaking of its power they feared as an ancient 
liege man feared an attack upon his lord. Not only village 
and city business folk feared the powers that could make or 

>Woodrow Wilson, "The New Freedom." New York, 188. 



108 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

unmake men at will, successful lawyers who filled the in- 
dustrial centres held a like view. They did not practise 
before petit juries. They drew contracts and argued before 
legislatures ; they advised powerful clients how far they might 
go in their contempt of law, and they sought safe investment 
for retired millionaires. They, too, waited upon business. 

Of course the universities were measurably free. But 
they were free only in the sense that Southern colleges 
were free in 1860 to explain facts contrary to the wishes of 
the owners of slaves, free to teach unwelcomed truth and 
take the consequences. Science was the very mother 
of industry, the instructress of modern materialism, and 
her votaries were welcome co-workers in the business world. 
In the rarest instances did the universities encourage men to 
indulge in criticism of things as they were. Nor was it 
different with the clergy. Henry Ward Beecher and Theo- 
dore Parker had no successors in the churches of the industrial 
centres of the North. Only the obscure, and perhaps Dr. 
Washington Gladden and Shailer Mathews among the emi- 
nent, thought of playing the role of Nathan, the prophet. 
Nothing succeeds like success. 

And where such amazing success as all the Northern 
states of the American Union had known since 1866 pre- 
vailed how was university or church protest to be effective.'' 
The older elements of the life of the East, the Middle States, 
and the Near West, had grown rich, had made themselves 
comfortable homes with baths in them; they carried their 
coupons to the banks for collection and contented themselves 
with the good things that came in consequence. They were 
still Protestant in religion but not Puritan; they gave liberally 
to the work of Church or charities, but did not wish to hear 
too many sermons or to be bothered with vital reforms. 
Back Bav or Euclid Avenue or the Northshore Drive was 



THE PROBLEM 109 

good enough for them and indeed these were clean and de- 
lightful places, just the kind of places where children should 
play. But these good descendants of Puritan New England 
did not have many children. Children gave too much trouble. 
The dominant element of the industrial North was in fact al- 
ready decadent and there was instant need of a new gospel, 
if men only knew it. 

But they did not know it. In the vast tenement districts of 
New York and Chicago there swarmed millions of dirty chil- 
dren and women, the families of the foreign-born workers in 
mills. Their streets were filthy and their houses grimy. 
Germans, Italians, Greeks, and Slavs, ignorant alike of the 
English language and of American institutions, made the 
basis upon which the industrial prosperity of the United States 
depended. They did the heavy work of American industry. 
More skilled men — native, foreign, or sons of foreigners — did 
the higher grades of work and organized to protect themselves 
against the cheaper labour of their unfortunate brethren. 
But organized Labour was never successful in its struggles 
with employers so long as five hundred thousand immi- 
grants arrived each year.^ 

This vast mass of poor folk, the foreign- and the native- 
born, made a North that was complex. How could a de- 
clining native American stock long maintain its control over 
these multiplying hordes that had never heard of birth control 
or race suicide? The first agency was the Catholic Church, 
to which most of them owed allegiance. In the land of 
Puritanism, Catholic priests said masses and Catholic pre- 
lates held sway quite as sovereign as the best of governors.- 

iWages were indeed increased and maintained at a high level in comparison with wages in 
Europe; but the increase was promptly added to the prices of commodities and the community 
M a whole bore the burden. 

'It is not many years since an archbishop of Boston refused to take second place at a dinner 
where the Governor of Massachusetts had the seat of honour. 



110 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Great church dignitaries are always social safety valves. 
Twelve or fifteen million Catholics do not make a controlling 
force in a region like the North if other religious organizations 
hold strongly to their faiths. Only other denominations 
did not hold firmly to their faiths. 

Thus the industrial region with its annual income of fifteen 
billions a year and its millions of poor and often unemployed 
men was within itself a social and economic problem when 
Wilson entered the White House, against the utmost protest 
of nearly all the wealthy people in the country. The region 
of greatest opposition contained the very rich, the well-to-do, 
and the vast numbers of undigested foreigners. Its religion 
was of a highly benevolent kind, giving money to every good 
cause, but not professing any very vital gospel. The strong- 
est element in it was the Catholic Church and even strenuous 
presidents, like Mr. Roosevelt, concerned themselves to have 
good Republican prelates made cardinals. It was the prob- 
lem of politics to keep this unstable society in repose. 

This problem lent an increasing power to the modern boss. 
In New England, the Middle States, and the Middle West, 
these important representatives of American life reached in 
1912 their highest development. One thinks of Messrs. 
Crane of Massachusetts, Murphy of New York City, Pen- 
rose of Pennsylvania, and Sullivan of Illinois. Whether 
Republican or Democratic, it was their business to help 
business men control legislatures, secure good judges for 
the courts, obtain franchises for city utilities, keep watch over 
labour movements, and block the way to success of upstart 
reformers. They were sometimes themselves close to high 
Church dignitaries, and they sometimes rewarded college 
men with seats in important political conventions. They 
seldom held public oSice; but they seldom lost control of 
public officials. In close electoral campaigns, like that of 



THE PROBLEM 111 

1896, they spent millions of dollars in order that there might 
not be any disruption of the economic or social order. 

Of equal importance was the newspaper press. The 
cost of an influential daily paper in a large city is very great. 
Its capital is apt to be near a million; its employes number 
thousands; its news franchises cost perhaps a hundred thou- 
sand a year. Such an institution can not be set up by mere 
upstarts, as in times long past when the freedom of the press 
was counted so dear as to be guaranteed in the national Con- 
stitution. Only through advertising may one expect to 
publish a newspaper. But advertising is supplied by the 
business community. It is not long supplied to papers whose 
editors disparage or attack business methods or favourite local 
institutions. Thus the modern newspaper is almost of 
necessity only an adjunct of business and business is de- 
pendent, as we all know, upon the great industrial or financial 
masters. Like the bosses, nearly all newspapers serve their 
day in the way of keeping things as they are. They en- 
deavour to prevent change. 

It is clear to any thinking man that change is the one thing 
that society must have or die. The new president of March, 
1913, was chosen for the purpose of changing the industrial 
life of the North. If he endeavoured to do that by a tariff 
reform, most of the agencies I have described would unite 
against him. All acknowledged that he was chosen to reform 
the tariff. But if he reformed it so as to injure any interest, 
he must be attacked. If by any chance any disturbance of the 
economic world followed his reforms, he knew that he would 
be blamed for that. In any other vital matter, his measures 
must be so timed and so carefully done that no important 
group should suffer. To do anything was dangerous; to do 
nothing, equally dangerous. 

And who would lend the new executive the necessary 



112 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

support? The large minorities in the cities and in the 
counties of the North who had voted for him? But mi- 
norities do not carry states and deliver votes in the electoral 
colleges. Perhaps organized Labour in the cities? But 
Labour has never been strong enough to resist the threats of 
employers in times of political crisis. Would a Presbyterian 
elder command the support of the cardinals and bishops of the 
Roman Church? If not, it would be hard for the new Demo- 
cratic administration to retain the support of those large 
minorities in states like Massachusetts and Illinois. 

If the position of the Democratic party was difficult indeed 
in every Northern state, its support in the South seemed 
secure. But this meant that the older and more rigid Prot- 
estant parts of the country, the conservative, native-born, 
English-speaking groups of the composite nation would be 
aligned behind the new regime. That of itself was an offence, 
as everyone saw from the importance attached by the Hughes 
campaign managers in 1916 to the sectional issue, and it was a 
source of weakness among those very high-minded Liber- 
als everywhere who felt that the South was still barbarous 
in its treatment of Negro crimes and offences. Moreover, 
the solid South was apd is agricultural and just a little archaic 
in its social life and culture, and thus hardly apt to endorse 
the new Democratic attitude toward woman suffrage. And 
woman suffrage was a burning question in 1913. 

Besides, the South had got just enough of the new in- 
dustrialism and the profits of big business to disturb the 
thinking of her leaders. The iron and coal interests of 
Alabama composed a minority of the economic values of the 
state, yet Alabama's leading representatives in Congress were 
among the devoted advocates of the iron and coal point of 
view. Although North Carolina was predominantly an 
agricultural community, her senior senator was hardly of 



THE PROBLEM 113 

that liberal class of public men that Wilson so much needed 
to head the Finance Committee of the Senate. In Virginia, 
the railroad interests had dominated the affairs of the state 
since 1896, if not since the rise of William Mahone in 1880; 
and its senators had been ardent opponents of the President 
in the Baltimore convention. Henry Watterson, the fore- 
most publicist of Kentucky, was an enemy of Mr. Wilson 
perhaps on mere personal grounds; while in Missouri, both 
senators and Speaker Clark were the makers and masters 
of one of the most reactionary machines in the country. K 
the South was homogeneous, it was far from Liberal on the 
great questions which any "forward-looking" president must 
press for solution. 

The machines of the East, Republican or Democratic, 
were likely to find support from similar machines in the South 
if the President insisted upon the adoption of woman suffrage 
for the country, or if he endeavoured to procure the enactment 
of an adequate child-labour law, so long pressed by the very 
men and women in the North and West who had done most to 
bring about his nomination. In the South, although men 
were ardent Democrats, economic interests took precedence 
over any theories of democracy that formerly underlay 
their party attitude, at least that was true of their more 
experienced statesmen. And, although Southerners were 
more religious and more Puritan than other sections of 
the country, the South was by no means a unit that 
could be wielded in any great crusade for a more humane 
and kindly foreign policy, for example, in relation to 
Mexico. The South was bound fast by the insoluble 
Negro problem. 

If, then, Mr. Wilson was to succeed, he must endeavour to 
build upon the foundations laid in three campaigns by Mr. 
Bryan. But the very name of Bryan was an offence to some 



114 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

good Eastern men who had helped Wilson to win the nomina- 
tion. In academic circles where there had been some support 
of Wilson one had only to mention the Nebraskan to call forth 
a sigh. Yet Bryan had been the only leader who had sup- 
ported an idealistic rank and file of the Democratic party in 
the West. And his followers in the South were just those 
men who had not yielded to the materialistic boss and in- 
dustrialist systems in states like Virginia, Alabama, and 
Louisiana. 

Again, if Wilson was to succeed he must seek to found a 
great personal party, a machine like those which Jefferson 
and Jackson had built. Only through a solid phalanx of 
devoted followers, held together by loyalty to the President 
as a great leader of men or perhaps by the hope of office or 
other good things to come, could he combat those powerful 
materialistic organizations of the North or those deep-seated 
prejudices that underlie the voting of the older elements of 
the South. Mr Bryan might greatly aid in the building of 
such a following, but it would require more than the ordinary 
generosity of friendship to yield himself, like John the 
Baptist, to the new leader. A great personal machine re- 
quires certain personal qualities none too well developed in 
Mr. Wilson. Yet if Northern Democrats would abandon 
dislikes, if Mr. Bryan would efface himself, and if the right 
tone could be struck, success might be won, won if eight 
years were granted in the presidency. These are many ifs. 
There are many ifs to any successful career in the White 
House. 

But if the solid industrial blocs of the North, if the distrust of 
the older New England stocks of any democratic regime 
could be overcome, and if the new president could arrange a 
combination of his friends with those of ISIr. Bryan, there 
was yet another and a complicated situation to be met in the 



THE PROBLEM 115 

spring of 1913. The industrial revolution had brought about 
the participation of the United States in the economic imper- 
ialism of the time. New York bankers were desirous of having 
a share in a great international loan to China, the interest 
on which was to be guaranteed by the governments con- 
cerned. The State Department was then being pressed to 
give its approval. The Monroe Doctrine, put forth in 1823 
as a guarantee of weaker American republics against Euro- 
pean aggression, had become a cover for American aggres- 
sion. Since the seizure by President Roosevelt of the 
Panama canal zone in 1903, every South American republic 
had been exceedingly anxious lest the United States should 
commit herself definitely to a policy of industrial and financial 
imperialism in that region.^ 

Of more immediate concern was the condition of Mexico. 
The people of that country, a mixed and ill-developed race 
under the tutelage of Roman Catholic priests, had never 
trusted the United States since the rape of Texas in 1845. But 
under the leadership of Porfirio Diaz the affairs of the coun- 
try were brought, by pure force, into order. Americans won 
joncessions of every sort: vast ranches, mines, oil fields, rail- 
ways, and other public utilities. Before 1913, Americans 
owned or controlled property in Mexico worth about six hun- 
dred millions. Similar concessions had been granted to Euro- 
peans of all the great industrial nations. Mexico was no longer 
Mexico; and the Mexicans, as ignorant and superstitious 
as the Russians of to-day, came to regard every foreigner as 
an enemy seeking to enslave them and enrich himself. Under 
the new Monroe Doctrine, the idea had gained general 
acceptance in Europe that the Government of the United 
States must be responsible for all that happened to foreigners 

>The best treatment of this subject will be found in A. B. Hart's, "The Monroe Doctrine," 
Boston, 1916. 



116 WCMDDROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

in Mexico, which only increased the bitterness of the Mexi- 



cans. 



Francisco Madero undertook to reform Mexico. He was 
brushed aside by Diaz. He then raised the standard of revo- 
lution, and in May, 1911, Diaz sailed for Paris and Madero 
became president of the country, although not accepted by 
the defeated followers of Diaz. In February, 1913, General 
Huerta deserted Madero, caused the latter to be assassinated, 
and proclaimed himself president. The American Ambassa- 
dor, Henry L. Wilson, interested always in the rights and 
concessions of his countrymen, gave a certain countenance to 
the new regime and forthwith began to urge his government 
to grant oflBcial recognition. President Taft, at the very 
close of his term, declined, of course, to commit himself; but 
American business men and American newspapers urged with 
the greatest earnestness the immediate recognition of the 
new Mexican president. The disinterested observer noted 
always in those days that it was business men who had con- 
nections and concessions, or newspapers that spoke for such 
American interests, which pressed so constantly for the recog- 
nition of the bloody-handed Huerta.^ 

Madero had not been able to protect foreigners in Mexico. 
Huerta was likewise unable to maintain order without as- 
sistance from other countries. More than a billion dollars' 
worth of property was at stake and foreigners were almost 
daily shot down by brigands or revolutionists. Europe, at 
the very height of industrial imperialism and on the verge of 
war, insisted upon the protection of European interests in 
Mexico or upon a guarantee that the Government of the 
United States would protect them. Industrialism had in- 



'Preaident Roosevelt's so-called big stick policy was a chief cause of this European attitude. 
'Up-to-date information, including bibliography, on Mexico may be found in the new "En» 
cyclopedia .\mericana," Vol. 18. 



THE PROBLEM 117 

deed broken that old isolation of which Americans had 
boasted since the time of Washington's famous Farewell 
Address. There was no isolation. There could be none for 
a country that had entered the modern industrial world. 
How would Wilson treat the Mexican problem? 

Nor was this all. The Spanish War left the United States 
in possession of the Philippine Islands. The natives resented 
subordination to the country which they had hoped would 
rescue them from Spain and set ihem free. Their repre- 
sentatives never ceased to urge in this country the applica- 
tion of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. 
But the growing and threatening imperialism of Japan, 
especially the conduct of the latter both in Korea and China, 
made it difficult to give that independence which had all 
along been promised. It might prove to be the beginning 
of a war in the Far East which must involve all the world. 
Yet the Democratic party had more than once promised free- 
dom to the islanders.^ 

At the close of the Spanish War, England and the United 
States entered into an agreement that the United States 
might build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama on the 
understanding that the shipping of all nations should receive 
equal treatment in using it. But Congress authorized in the 
Tolls Act of 1912 that the American coastwise shipping might 
use the canal free of tolls. Although it was commonly 
known that this coastwise shipping was almost exclusively in 
the control of the great continental railways, both the old 
political parties endorsed this exemption in their platforms. 
The British Ambassador, James Bryce, protested that the 
understanding with England had been violated. Other 
European nations took the British view. And the facts 



iln every platform since 1900 and particularly in the Jones bill* of 1011-12. 



118 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

seemed to show that Congress was wilhng to violate a treaty 
in order to rrant a favour to certain railroad interests. 

The building of the canal had indeed bound the country 
still more closely to the imperialistic diplomacy of the modern 
world. Nor was it possible that it should be otherwise. More- 
over, the canal was the beginning of a Caribbean policy for 
the United States which resembled the century-old Mediter- 
ranean policy of Great Britain. The United States, owning 
the canal, could not allow any other country to own any- 
thing within striking distance. Central American states were, 
as they had been in the days of the planter domination, 
1850-60, of necessity ancillary to the canal zone. No other 
strong power might have a foothold in them; and no weak 
power could gain one. In like manner the islands of the 
Caribbean became important to the United States. The 
very hint of the sale of one of these islands to Germany or 
Britain was enough in 1912 to set American public opinion 
on edge. It might mean war. The Monroe Doctrine was in 
consequence made to cover that, as indeed it did cover one 
phase of it — only now the plain objective was American 
possession of every island or station that might happen to be 
available.^ 

Thus when Mr. Wilson, elected upon a minority of the 
votes of his countrymen, came to office, the United States 
was industrially a part of the great world of which Germany 
and England were the leaders and no longer the isolated 
nation that her people fondly conceived her to be. This 
fact was quite strongly foreshadowed in the last public ad- 
dress of President McKinley^ delivered to the assembled 
leaders of railways and industry at Buffalo in 1901 . He then 

iThis imperialistic outgrowth of the canal building might have been avoided by the neu- 
tralization of the Panama zone, but American leaders and American newspapers would not 
for a moment allow any such procedure. 

'Wilson's message of December 3, 1919, repeats the same thing. 



THE PROBLEM 119 

declared that the former extremely high tariff policy of his 
party must be abandoned. The time had come when Amer- 
ican industries must overflow the tariff walls set up for 
their protection. These walls were then about to become a 
hindrance to exportations. They must be lowered. Within 
a short decade the very character of the United States had 
changed. But political leaders and party shibboleths gave 
no evidence that this fact was understood . ^ Truly the novice 
in politics came to office at a critical time. 

If he understood all that transpired in the world, and 
nobody has ever been so wise, he might yet fail entirely 
to accomplish anything really important for the coun- 
try or the world. For, if he proved able to lead an unwill- 
ing North, kept the South in working harness and drew 
to himself all the great following of Mr. Bryan, he might yet 
wreck everything in possible blunders or in a failure to bring 
Congress to a hearty cooperation. Here the meaning of the 
Constitution was apt to be called into question. And most 
Americans are worshippers of written constitutions, devoted 
followers of men long since dead and past the hope of political 
salvation. The Constitution provides, or is thought to pro- 
vide, that each house of Congress is absolutely independent 
of the other, that both are independent of the president, that 
the judges of the Supreme Court may veto any act of Congress 
and bring to naught any policy of both Congress and presi- 
dent if in their judgment the rights of individuals or corpora- 
tion should be put in jeopardy. Moreover, the members 
of the Senate must be chosen for terms of six years by states, 
and they have ever been chosen to represent the interests or 
the desires of states and not the interests or desires of the 
nation as a whole. Members of the House of Representatives 

>Nor have the events of the great war brought even the so-called articulate elementj to a 
realization of the fact. 



120 WOODROW WILSON \ND HIS WORK 

are likewise chosen by districts, for two-year terms, to repre- 
sent the interests of districts and not those of the country. 
The president is chosen by the people of the country for a 
four-year term to represent the country. Thus everybody 
in Washington represents something different from every- 
body else, except as the bonds of political parties tend to 
overcome this. A senator outlives a president, a president 
outlives a representative, and the judges of the Supreme 
Court outlive all. 

Never has a great oflBce been so hedged about as the 
American presidency. And yet in 1913 the President was 
elected to do some of the greatest things any executive 
oflBcer ever had been set to do. Wilson had been long an 
advocate of the idea that the American Government was no 
government at all if administered strictly according to the 
Constitution. His idea that a president must unite his party 
in Congress and the country, lead it to positive action and 
then accept both personal and party responsibility was known 
to political scientists everywhere, but not to members of 
Congress^ at all, congressmen having long since forsworn the 
use of books. What would happen when the minority 
president set about uniting his followers in Congress, writing 
bills for them to enact and then personally pressing them 
against the interests of their constituents to vote for them? 
For a hundred years senators had claimed immunity from 
such pressure. They had sometimes dictated to presidents 
and many times brought to naught the declared purposes of 
the people. Representatives were less stubborn and not 
historically so deeply rooted, yet they, too, knew how to defeat 
presidents who sought to lead them whither they did not wish 
to go. 

'Hearings of U. S. Senate Committee on Education and Labour — testimony of W. Z. Foster. 
In Reneral, the hearings of committees of Congress have shown this very distinctly. Perhaps a, 
very sma,\l number of congressmen read the serious books of the time. 



THE PROBLEM 121 

Truly, the leadership of the United States is the most diffi- 
cult and trying thing in the world. But Congress was not 
the only obstacle. The judges of the Supreme Court count 
themselves the infallible arbiters of great matters in the 
United States. They are the popes and the cardinals of the 
American system all in one. It must be so. In every 
country there must be an infallible person or group, else there 
can be no stability. In England it is Parliament; in imperial 
Germany it was the Kaiser and the Bundesrath; in the 
United States the effort was made to divide responsibility 
among three distinct branches of the sovereignty. No such 
division is possible. The Supreme Court took upon itself 
under the leadership of the great judge, John Marshall, the 
responsibility which someone must exercise. ^ Only one? or 
twice has the decision of Marshall been challenged and then 
unsuccessfully. One recalls Lincoln's bittei complaint of 
1858 and Bryan's challenge of 1896. It is a curious thing in 
the struggle for democracy in the United States that men have 
never really endeavoured to set up machinery whereby the 
people might become the judge in great matters.^ 

How was Wilson to succeed in 1913? He knew and all 
thoughtful men knew that he must attack the great powers 
of industry, of finance, and of organized monopoly. He must 
deal with the rights of property, effect in some way a re- 
distribution of wealth. The problem was concentration of eco- 
nomic power, just as the problem of 1860 was the concentra- 
tion of wealth, that is, social and political power in the hands 
of a few thousand masters of slaves. If the schoolmaster 
from New Jersey set about his real task, the majority of Con- 
gress would oppose him, in part from an instinctive fear of 

iFor the ablest and latest authority on Marshall and his work see Mr. A. J. Beveridge's 
"Life of John Marshall," Boston, 1919. 
* As England, for example, has done. 



122 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

such reform, in part from ignorance oi the needs of the coun- 
try, and in part from motives of mere party advantage. If 
it came to a fight in Congress the leaders of industry would 
at once thrust the immense weight of their influence into the 
scales against him. If he managed to keep a majority of 
Congress on his side, it must in the nature of things appear to 
both the industrial North and the older social groups there 
as a sectional struggle. If the majority of Congress, led by 
the South and the President, set up a vital reform, the courts 
were most likely to declare the finished work unconstitu- 
tional; and, as a rule, the articulate elements of the people 
have sustained the courts against all comers. In such a posi- 
tion the new president was likely to find himself of little real 
value to the country, for no able man cares merely for the 
honour of living in the White House. Moreover, a president 
must keep Congress, a majority of the country, and the courts 
working together at least four years in order to be a moderate 
success. He must continue the cooperation and continue 
to go forward for eight years and then leave a successor of 
like mind in office if he would be a great president. It re- 
quires from eight to twelve years of successful administra- 
tion in the United States to set up a tradition that will out- 
last the life of the leader who would impress his generation. 

Jefferson was such a leader and' a successful president. 
Jackson also set up a social and political dynasty that en- 
dured long after he was in the grave. Lincoln succeeded, 
too, but rather because he brought the nation's greatest war 
to a successful conclusion and died immediately thereafter 
than because he left a successor of his own choosing in ofiice. 
Cleveland was historically due for a similar contribution to 
American life, but Cleveland failed as did McKinley. Roose- 
velt essayed the great task, won the necessary popularity, 
but it was contrary to the nature of political parties in the 



THE PROBLEM 123 

cxmntry for him and his successor to reform industry and its 
attendant evils. It was his own chief support that he en- 
deavoured to reform; that is, if he succeeded he must pull 
down the party that set him up! 

Wilson came. He had the older ethnical elements of the 
country behind him, the body of orthodox Americans, both 
religious and economic; he had the support of the old South, 
though, as we have seen, it was not a united South; and he had 
the Democratic party for his weapon of attack. The diffi- 
culty was that reform had been delayed too long; the thought- 
patterns of the people had remained the same too long and 
the difficulties of peaceful change had become, as I think I 
have shown, almost impossible to meet. It is, therefore, 
not surprising that a great ex-senator visited Washington 
soon after the inauguration, talked with the astute men 
there, and solemnly announced that "the schoolmaster of 
New Jersey would not succeed, that the election of 1914 
would take away his majority in Congress, and that in 1916 
a Republican president would take his place. "^ He is re- 
ported to have added that only Republicans could govern the 
United States. The opinion of the ex-senator was likewise 
the opinion of the representatives of the foreign governments 
in Washington.^ Men of the world distrusted the idealistic 
programme of Wilson's campaign. It could not succeed, yet 
it must be tried. If it failed, Wilson would fail. If some 
materialistic compromise were set up in its place the new 
president would not only fail; he would be ridiculous. Such 
was the problem of 1913 and such the difficulties with which 
the " schoolmaster " must begin. 



'This prophecy was reported to the writer by an experienced ex-senator who had the languagt 
direct from its author. 
'This the author has from unimpeachable sources. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE GREAT REFORMS 

DURING the months which followed the election of 1912 
the President-elect set about building the administrative ma- 
chine with which he would endeavour to work. The Cabinet 
was the first element. Of course he must take his official 
family from the Democratic party. The last Democratic 
president, Grover Cleveland, had undertaken to employ 
distinguished representatives of the opposing party as in- 
timate counsellors; but Cleveland had no party when he left 
office. That example was not enticing. 

But the Democratic party had not held office in sixteen 
years. It contained few men of high public experience. 
Even these were not available to Wilson. They were men 
of opposing social and economic views. Governor Harmon 
was a conservative of rather extreme tendency. Repre- 
sentative Underwood was of the same frame of mind and was, 
besides, already on the way to the Senate whence few politi- 
cians ever return, save upon political defeat. Wilson could 
not call upon the greater organizations of the party, like those 
of Illinois or Virginia, for their leaders were almost personally 
hostile. The more-or-less radical Democrats must be his 
advisers. 

Among these Mr. Bryan was the foremost. As Mr. Sidney 
Brooks said in the North American Revietc at the time,^ the 
country selected Bryan and Wilson must abide the choice. 

'The SoTih American Reviev. Vol. 198, pp. 27 ei aeq. 

124 



THE GREAT REFORMS 125 

Yet the choice was an almost mortal offence to Mr. George 
Harvey and his friends of the Eastern wing of the party. It 
was a warning to the older machine men who had sought to 
control the party ever since 1896. And they had often been 
successful. Mr. Bryan became Secretary of State. And 
the fact of Bryan in that oflfice was a standing announcement 
to the world that a new day had come. It meant a bitter 
war of all the greater financial men of the time against the 
President. 

There were two other members of the new cabinet of 
similar mould. Mr. Josephus Daniels of North Carolina, a 
close friend of the Nebraska leader, was made Secretary of 
the Navy. Mr. Albert S. Burleson of Texas, also a friend 
of Mr. Bryan and a former member of Congress, was given 
charge of the Post Office Department. Both of these men 
were experienced politicians, loyal Southerners, and Demo- 
crats of unblemished standing. They were counted upon 
to aid the Secretary of State in pressing administration 
measures upon Congress. The other members of the new 
administration were Messrs. McAdoo, Garrison, Lane, Hous- 
ton, Redfield, and Wilson, the first four being quite as much 
business men as public characters. This second group gave 
at that time no particular promise of high service. But the 
great war which was so soon to subject all to the utmost test 
has shown that their selection was justified. This is not to 
say that the Cabinet has been beyond criticism. Some of its 
members have certainly made serious blunders; but most of 
them have rendered very great service both to the country 
and to their chief. Mr. Bryan resigned in June, 1915, rather 
than agree to the warlike note to the German Emperor which 
the President insisted upon sending. But Bryan had no 
quarrel with his chief; and he remained a warm supporter 
of the Administration. Mr. Garrison, the Secretary of War, 



126 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

lost his head in the discussion of mihtary matters in the 
winter of 1916 and resigned.^ 

It was not such a cabinet as President Lincoln gathered 
about him in March, 1861. It was certainly not a group of 
all the talents, as was once said of a British cabinet. Nor 
was it a quarrelsome body of men as those about Lincoln 
certainly were. It was an administrative cabinet not unlike 
that which Jefferson selected and kept about him during two 
terms. Nor have the two men who were invited to take the 
places of Messrs. Bryan and Garrison — Mr. Lansing and Mr. 
Baker — been exceptions to the rule. The Cabinet was se- 
lected with two definite purposes in mind : one group to aid in 
the passing of important bills through Congress and to keep the 
Administration in harmony with the party outside, the other 
primarily for high administrative work. As a whole, the 
Cabinet has proved quite as successful as any of its predeces- 
sors, with one notable exception. There has certainly been 
little disloyalty or backbiting.^ 

If the Cabinet gave fair promise of success, the other 
means of drawing a majority of the country to him, the 
connection of the President with party or economic chieftains, 
did not promise so well. Wilson was an outsider from the 
political point of view. The experience he had had as a 
public man in New Jersey only tended to alienate him from 
the older leaders and these leaders could not easily forget or 
forgive his treatment of ex-Senator James Smith. It was a 
warning to all who wished any other than public ends. 
Wilson must then endeavour to win the masses of , the people 
to him by his public statements and by his acts. And in the 
art of rallying disinterested men to him Wilson has been 
surpassed by only two presidents, Jefferson and Jackson ; but 

iCompare Wilson's own view of what a cabinet should be in The Review of Reviews for April, 
1893. 

'For Lincoln's cabinet, see A. Rothschild's "Lincoln, Ma^iler of Men," Boston, 1906. 



THE GREAT REFORMS 127 

Wilson, unlike Jefferson and Jackson, has not shown any 
abihty to bind men to him through personal-friend loyalty. 
Men follow him from intellectual motives, not upon the 
principle expressed in the saying: "The gang's all here." 
Wilson, as I have already made clear, is a master of con- 
vincing statement; and he made it his particular business 
to inform and inspire all classes of disinterested people from 
the first day of his Administration. In that way he meant to 
build a great popular support. His first inaugural address is 
an excellent illustration of the new president at his best. 

It was a great occasion. The country had gone through a 
long and bitter struggle in which the masses of men of the 
older American ideals and agrarian interests had contended 
against the newer industrial system and its powerful allies in 
business. The former had won after many years of failure 
and Wilson was their spokesman. Fully conscious of all the 
bearings of the situation, he read on March 4, 1913, his 
careful and matured statement. 

We have done great things in this country and we have 
suffered many ignoble things to be done. We have won 
unparalleled victories over Nature and at the same time we 
have sacrificed much of the great heritage from Nature in a 
reckless haste to pile up vast fortunes. Powerful and in- 
comparably wealthy men have held high influence with us 
while millions of poor and dependent people have worked and 
suffered in squalid homes, in dangerous mills, and unwhole- 
some mines. And the Government we have all loved has 
often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and 
those who have used it have forgotten the people. Our duty 
is to cleanse and restore, to correct the evil without impairing 
the good. We have come now to the sober second thought. 
We mean to square our present conduct with every ideal and 
promise with which we so proudly began in 1776. Wc shall 



128 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

deal with great industry as it is and as it may be modified and 
not as we might do if we had a clean sheet of paper to write 
upon.* 

He concluded: "This is not a day of triumph; it is a day 
of dedication. Here muster not the forces of party, but the 
forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives 
hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we 
will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail 
to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward- 
looking men to my side. God helping me, I will not fail 
them, if they will but counsel and sustain me." 

High and noble ideals. It was indeed the language and 
appeal of a new character in our public life, an earnest call to 
all those humane and kindly reformers who had helped 
Colonel Roosevelt bear aloft his Progressive flag. Would 
the new president, with his minority following, win either the 
greater or the lesser leaders of that movement to his side? 
That was an anxious query to many minds in the spring of 
1913. Perhaps it was not in the nature of things for the 
ex-President to lend Wilson his support. But others not so 
fast bound to the industrial interests of the country might 
yield. 

xVfter the inauguration and the omission of the customary 
stupid ball. President Wilson set himself to the hard task of 
changing the very current of history. And the need was 
great. The United States had been set up as an asylum for 
the poor. It remained poor for many decades and its inter- 
national relations were simple and unaffected, hardly touched 
by the great world of diplomacy and chicane. But as the 
years went by the Monroe Doctrine, at first set up as a shield 
of small American republics against possible European 



'This paragraph I have paraphrased somewhat freely from the original in G. M. Harper's 
'Addresses of Woodrow Wilson," New York, 1917, 1-8. 



THE GREAT REFORMS 129 

aggression, became a rock of offence to all our Latin-Amer- 
ican neighbours. As the United States grew powerful, 
its citizens wished to have its power follow them, like 
that of ancient Rome, wherever they went. In Chili, in 
Brazil, in Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico there had grown 
up a fear and a distrust of Americans that very much re- 
sembled the fear and distrust of the border peoples of the 
Roman republic toward those privileged Latins who in the 
time of the Caesars overawed their weaker neighbours. 
There was considerable cause. In Mexico men still talked of 
the rape of Texas in 1845; in Colombia they insisted that 
Roosevelt had seized the Panama canal zone in the good old 
Roman way.^ In Venezuela, in spite of the Cleveland 
episode which probably saved the country from large ter- 
ritorial loss, there was the bitterest hatred of Americans. 
The so-called A. B. C. powers had been directing their di- 
plomacy against the implications of the Monroe Doctrine for 
twenty-five years^ and it was the insistence of South Amer- 
ican representatives at the Second Hague Conference in 1907 
that prevented a satisfactory agreement on the subject of the 
international responsibility of smaller countries for the col- 
lection of private debts within their borders. 

A great deal has been said, both in bitter anger and in 
friendly remonstrance, about the character of the men whom 
Wilson sent abroad to carry out his new policy. But men 
have forgotten in the presence of a great world war that the 
diplomats of the Wilson Administration were appointed when 
there was no thought of war or the complications that fol- 
lowed. Still, one might read much American history without 
finding better men at foreign courts than Walter H. Page, am- 
bassador to England, James W. Gerard in Berlin, and Henry 

'Colonel Roosevelt himself said in California in 1910 to a large audience: "I took Panama." 
'A. B. Hart, "The Monroe Doctrine, An Interpretation," pp. 862-7. 



130 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Morgenthau in Constantinople. These were new men, to be 
sure. Wilson could not retain the older diplomats and expect 
a satisfactory execution of his plans. But new or old, these 
men have never been accused of want of ability or devotion to 
the cause of their country. Page gave his life in London, un- 
complaining, as a penalty for his devotion, and Gerard was 
unquestionably equal to all that could have been expected 
from any representative at the court of the Hohenzollerns. 

Of the other appointees, the bitter wail of some critics may 
be partially explained on other grounds than sheer devotion 
to the best interests of the country. Few will ever find heart 
to say that Maurice F. Egan, minister to Denmark, Brand 
Whitlock in Brussels, and Paul S. Reinsch in Peking, were not 
in the critical years of the World War equal to the best of 
their predecessors and wholly satisfactory to the American 
people. But there were others in South America, at the smaller 
capitals of other "backward countries," and perhaps in some 
important posts who owed their appointment merely to pull 
or political considerations, unworthy of attention. But 
when this is freely granted, the historian can not but ask, when 
has any other American president had a better list to show? 
Nor must it be forgotten that in our day of wireless and 
cable, the president is in all important diplomatic matters 
his own ambassador and his own minister. His decision can 
be had any day. Some of the agents of President Wilson 
have not been of the wise and highly efficient type of Amer- 
icans; but it is yet to be shown that any great American 
interest has suffered. 

I have shown in the preceding chapter that the whole 
foreign policy was ready for reform. Indeed the whole in- 
ternational system of commercial imperialism stood in 
imminent danger of overthrow. What Wilson was elected 
to do for the industrial life of the United States was equally 



THE GREAT REFORMS 131 

needful for the whole industrial world. Within a week Wil- 
son made known his lack of interest in the proposed six- 
power Chinese loan already arranged when President Taft 
left oflBce. But without assurance from the new Democratic 
party that its leaders would follow the imperialistic policy of 
the preceding fifteen years, New York financiers did not wish 
to proceed. Not only the Chinese loan, but the Monroe 
Doctrine and the relations with Mexico were all under con- 
sideration. 

From March 11th to December 2nd the President matured 
and explained to the world a new foreign policy.'^ He would 
have no more exploitation of South American countries by 
Americans under cover of the Monroe Doctrine; but he would 
associate all Latin-American governments with that of the 
United States in a common policy. If Americans wished to 
make investments in any part of Latin America, they must 
not expect the people of the United States to send their army 
and navy to aid in the collection of either principal or interest. 
If the nationals of the United States or other countries found 
themselves in difficulties, they must endeavour to settle 
things in the local courts and according to the laws of the 
country in which they had taken up their residence. He 
would endeavour to assist them; he would persuade the 
heads of weaker powers to do justice, but he would not make 
of the Government an instrument for the advancement of 
private fortunes or for the humiliation of governments that 
had difficulty in maintaining the validity of contracts tainted 
with fraud or unfair dealing. 

The best expression of this new Monroe, or Wilson Doctrine, 
will be found in the address delivered by the President at 
Mobile on October 27, 1913. In that statement he made it 



«An important documents bearing on lli'ia change of policy will be found in Robinson and 
West, "The Foreign Pohcy of Woodrow Wilson," New York, 1917, pp. 179-206. 



132 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

plain that exploitation of weaker peoples had been the cause 
of most of the difficulty as well as of the growing hatred to- 
ward the United States in most Latin- American countries. 
He urged them to maintain order; but he promised them not 
to meddle in their affairs in the name of the Monroe Doctrine. 
And he invited all to make a common American association 
of powers for the advancement of democracy in world affairs. 

In a similar spirit he sent John Lind to Mexico to persuade 
General Huerta to make friends with his rivals and op- 
ponents and himself abandon the presidency which he had 
usurped. The voice of the Mexicans, albeit men laughed at 
them as ignorant and stupid, meant more to Wilson than the 
cries of even thousands of American adventurers who had 
gone to Mexico to make fortunes in devious ways. He ad- 
vised the latter to leave the country when the revolution 
endangered their lives, and he gave them all possible aid; 
))ut he would not send the army or the navy to enforce private 
rights of Americans or to maintain order against the wishes of 
the Mexicans. Of course Huerta, conscious of the mild and 
humane policy of the President and aware of the support he, 
Huerta, was receiving from great American papers and finan- 
ciers, did not heed the warning. Wilson was left to his 
policy of "watchful waiting" as he himself described it in 
December, 1913. 

Toward the Philippines he entertained the same views. 
The imperialistic policy of 1898 and the exigencies of inter- 
national diplomacy had tended to make of the United States 
only another colonizing and commercial power in the Far 
East. He announced to the Fi ipinos on October 6, 1913, 
in the address of the new Governor-General, that "the mere 
extent of the American conquest is not what gives America 
distinction in the annuls of the world, but the professed pur- 
pose of the conquest which was to sec to it that every foot of 



THE GREAT REFORINIS VS3 

this land should be the home of free, self -governed people, who 
should have no government whatever which did not rest upon 
the consent of the governed." And a little later, with ap- 
proval of Congress, the islanders were given a still larger 
control of their affairs, a control which left the governor the 
only active power of the United States in the islands. The 
next step was to be complete independence. 

In South America, in Mexico, and in the Philippines he was 
setting to the imperialist powers of the world an example that 
ought to have influenced them; and he was denying to 
business men of the country the free exercise of that long- 
acknowledged privilege, which business men have so loved in 
the past, of exploiting backward peoples. But in the midst 
of this reform, Japan and California, long disposed to quarrel, 
forced upon him an issue about the right of Japanese subjects 
to own land in the United States. For months the Cali- 
fornians, under the leadership of Governor Johnson, in- 
sisted upon their right to prohibit subjects of Japan from 
owning lands in the state. The President endeavoured to 
moderate the people of "the coast" and to pacify the Japa- 
nese Government. The crisis passed, but the question of 
refusing the Japanese rights in the United States which were 
and still are granted to the subjects of other sovereignties 
remained unanswered till the assembling of the Paris Con- 
ference. 

While the President was thus laying the foundations of 
the new policy in Latin America and in the Far East, Mr. 
Bryan prepared his scheme of universal arbitration. In 
April, 1913, he laid his plan before the assembled diplomats 
in Washington and began, without undue encouragement 
from them, the submission of his proposed treaties to the 
various countries. Many of the smaller countries of the world 
made haste to sign agreements, and Great Britain gave its 



134 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

approval. Other European nations except Germany signed. 
The President was in full accord with his Secretary of State. 
That he really meant that the United States should sacrifice 
important interests in the cause is shown by his settlement 
of the canal tolls question which England had kept before 
the country since the beginning of the last session of Congress 
under the Taft Administration. The European press was 
almost unanimous in its condemnation of the exemption by 
Congress of American coastwise shipping from the payment of 
tolls for the use of the Panama Canal. The business in- 
terests of the country insisted upon the favoured treatment 
of American shipping. The President asked Congress on 
March 5, 1914, fora repeal of the law, saying that we could not 
afford to be regarded as seeking any undue advantage, even 
if the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty did guarantee such advantage. 
The prompt repeal of a law that had been passed by very 
large majorities shows how strong a hold the President had 
upon the country at the end of his first year in ofiice. 

Thus during the short period that Wilson was to have free 
of the complications of a great war, he was trying to educate 
his countrymen to a new and more kindly spirit in the old 
world of secret diplomacy. He hoped to convince some of 
the other peoples of the world that a less grasping diplom- 
acy might after all be more profitable.' "My dream is that 
as the years go on and the world knows more and more of 
America, it will turn to America for those moral inspirations 
which lie at the basis of all freedom ; that the world will never 
fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some en- 
terprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity."^ 
And when his conciliatory policywith Mexico was giving end- 
less worry and he had authorized the employment of force, 
he said to the graduating class at Annapolis : " They have had 

'■From a speech delivered al Philadelphia, July 4, 1914. 



THE GREAT REFORMS 135 

to use some force — I pray God it may not be necessary for 
them to use any more — but do you think that the way they 
fought is going to be the most lasting impression? Have 
men not fought ever since the world began? Is there any- 
thing new in using force?" 

Here was indeed a new faith in high place. Nor had he 
been loth to exercise his faith in common men when on May 
2, 1913, he recognized the young Chinese Republic. The self- 
determination of peoples was to be seen in this as in the new 
attitude toward Latin America. Of course the plan of leaving 
the Mexicans to govern their own country, well or ill; of al- 
lowing South American courts to determine the issues of right 
and wrong as between foreigners and their own citizens ; and 
of yielding freely to the wishes of the Chinese who were trying 
to set up a government of the people was greeted with jeers 
in Europe and especially in great American cities. A London 
paper said that the Golden Rule would not work and Wilson 
would learn, as did Gladstone, to apply the big stick. The 
Boston Transcript said that Mr. Wilson was a sort of Mr. 
Micawber in diplomacy, and the Detroit Free Press asked: 
"Who of us can say that the United States will never again 
embark on a war of conquest?" 

Still, the first great reform of the Wilson Administration 
and one of the most important of all, a reform of the American ^ 
foreign policy, had been begun. There were, in spite of the 
taunts of the metropolitan newspapers, many supporters 
of the new ideal. Plain people everywhere espoused it, in 
so far as they understood it. Many of the so-called intellect- 
uals endorsed it; and a large number of newspapers, like 
the Springfield Republican, said that when men got over the 
shock of Golden-Rule diplomacy they would hardly stand out 
against it.^ However great the success of the new diplomacy 

•Quoted in The Literary Digest, November 8, 1913. 



136 WOODllOW WILSON AND HIS AYORK 

was, and in view of the great war that was so soon to break 
upon the world, it was supremely important, the effect of 
it all depended upon the greater problem of what to do with 
industrialism, with the abuses or overgrowths of business. 
If Wilson did not begin a reform of the industrial life of the 
country, and begin it in a way that could not easily be re- 
versed, his golden rule in foreign affairs would not avail, and 
his Administration would prove a failure. 

While the country was catching its breath and preparing 
to think about the new diplomacy, the President called Con- 
gress together for the 8th of April, 1913. It was a Democratic 
congress by large margins. There could be no good excuse, 
as there had been during the Cleveland administrations, if 
the party did not function. Wilson appeared in person be- 
fore the two houses and read an earnest but very brief ap- 
peal asking for the promptest possible reduction of the tariff.^ 
He gave evidence of his method at once. He would appear 
in person to argue his case; he would take up one thing at a 
time; he would himself guide the course of legislation. It 
was a new thing. But it was not new to him. He had said 
that such must be the method of presidents if they would 
lead the country and prevent Congress from becoming in- 
volved in impotent snarls such as had marked the career of 
more than one president. In fact, it has been his guiding prin- 
ciple as a public man and there was no just cause for surprise.* 

Yet the opposition forgot for the moment the Mexican 
tangle and the new foreign policy to attack this kind of per- 
sonal rule, this "dictation from the White House." But 
the Cabinet was a unit behind the President and Congress set 
about a real reform of the tariff. Not since 1857 had there 

>A11 important speeches of the IVesident will be found in G. M. Harper's "Addresses of 
President Wilson," 1918. 

^The Review of Reviews for April, 1893, gives a brief outline by Professor Woodrow Wilson 
of the proper procedure for a president who proposes to lead. 



THE GREAT REFORMS 137 

been any real reduction of the tariff rates. Now came a gen- 
eral downward revision from an average of 42 per cent, upon 
imports to a level of 26 per cent. That is, the schedules 
of 1913 were made substantially what they had been under 
the Walker Law of 1846. For once the rates of pro- 
tection were neither suggested nor fixed by representatives 
of the protected interests. In the Birmingham manufactur- 
ing district a strong movement was set afoot to persuade its 
representative, Mr. Underwood, the chairman of the House 
Committee of Ways and Means, to make exceptions in favour 
of certain kinds of steel. The movement failed. Then the 
sugar men of Louisiana, never representing the larger body 
of people of that state, endeavoured to persuade the Senate 
that a Democratic tariff must protect sugar. This appeal 
failed likewise. The beet-sugar men of Michigan and the 
citrus fruit producers of California made like outcries. But 
there were, when the law was enacted and put into force, 
few if any jokers. 

There was, moreover, a tariff board created whose purpose 
was to be the study of future protectionist and free-trade 
propositions. This board was set up to watch the workings 
of the tariff and make reports and recommendations in the 
interests of the whole people. Professor F. W. Taussig, the 
foremost student of the subject in the country, was made its 
head. If the Wilson plan succeeded, the tariff problem, long 
since a highly technical matter, would be taken out of politics.^ 

Of more far-reaching effect was the part of the Underwood- 
Simmons Tariff Law which enacted an income tax. Ever since 
the second year of the Civil War Americans had discussed the 
advisability of an income tax. Mark Twain made unmerci- 
ful fun of his countrymen for their successful efforts at evasion 
of the tax that was laid in Lincoln's time. A later law, en- 

'F. W. Taussig, "Some Phases of the Tariff Question," New York, 1915. 



138 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

acted during Cleveland's second terra, was declared uncon- 
stitutional by the Supreme Court in a way that greatly in- 
jured the prestige of that body. At the close of President 
Taft's term, a constitutional amendment was adopted that 
removed all obstacles, real or imaginary, to the proposed 
tax. The cause of the prolonged opposition was the desire 
of the wealthy people of the country to escape all national 
taxation, except as they might pay it through the customs 
house collections upon imports. In other words, the indus- 
trial districts, with their vast and growing wealth, feared any 
national tax system because the majority of the country was 
rural and likely to escape any large levies. 

The Wilson Administration assumed that a just tax must 
always be levied according to the ability of people to pay. It 
did not matter whether the wealth was concentrated in a 
narrow section in so far as the tax was concerned. The long- 
desired law was passed at the same time that the tariff was 
lowered. It was a liberal law in so far as great fortunes were 
concerned. Incomes of three thousand or less were to be 
exempt. A man of family was exempt on four thousand. 
All incomes in excess of twenty thousand a year were to be 
taxed progressively from two to six per cent., according to 
amount. Senator Root solemnly attacked the proposed 
measure in Congress. Once again newspapers of the big cities 
declared that to tax a rich man at a higher rate than a poor 
man was outrageous. But the bill became law. It was very 
imperfect in the beginning. After the great war began it 
was reshaped and heavy taxes were laid upon the great in- 
comes. The returns for 1916 of both corporations and per- 
sonal incomes showed that all the states south of the Potomac 
and the Ohio and including Texas paid less into the Federal 
treasury than the single state of Illinois. ^ This was proof 

iStatistics of Income for 1916, Treasury Department, p. 13. 




Wealth of the United States, 1860 

Each dot indicates one hundred millions of property. Note 
fairly even distribution. Compare with Map on Income Tax for 
1916 




Distribution of Wealth Shown by Income Tax 
Returns of 1916 

One dot represents one million dollars' income tax paid. Dots are 
placed as nearly as possible where the tax was collected 

139 



140 WOODROVV WILSON AND HIS WORK 

enough that the law was needed; as it was evidence also of 
the appallingly unequal distribution of wealth among the 
great industries of the people. 

A more important matter followed close upon the heels of 
the so-called Underwood-Simmons tariff. It was the Federal 
Reserve Banking Law. From the panic of 1907, a commission, 
headed by Senator Nelson B. Aldrich,^ had studied the sub- 
ject of national banking and endeavoured to work out a re- 
form which should at once render panics obsolete, give the 
country an even currency, and at the same time focus 
the control in a great central bank in New York City. 
Millions had been spent in the expenses of investigations, 
of visits to Europe, the salaries of experts, and in 
propaganda. But no constructive act of Congress had been 
passed. The people as a whole feared and distrusted 
the men who guided the work; they opposed the idea of 
a great national bank. Mr. Aldrich and his friends wished 
a system like that of England or Germany but with the 
control in the hands of private bankers. While everybody 
recognized the dangerous situation nobody could hope to 
win popular approval of the old concentrated financial 
dictation which Andrew Jackson had smashed eighty years 
before. 

The President gave the banking situation his earnest con- 
sideration. Secretary McAdoo and Carter Glass, then chair- 
man of the House Committee on Banking, cooperated, and 
among them the present Federal Reserve Law was worked 
out. Mr. Wilson, following the precedent already set, urged 
the bill upon Congress. There was much debate in both 
houses and much pressure from without, prophecies without 
number that no national banking system under governmental 



«"S«n«te Documents," 63rd Congress, 1 Session, No. 288. 



THE GREAT REFORMS 141 

direction could succeed.^ Secretary Bryan and other mem- 
bers of the Cabinet laboured with members of Congress to 
secure the passage of the bill. It was a case of governmental 
"team work" and the reform measure became law in the 
closing days of 1913. 

During the spring of 1914 the country was divided into 
twelve banking districts and reserve cities named. In each 
city a reserve bank was designated or set up. There was a 
local board for each. At the head of the system was the 
Treasury Department whose oflScers were to be members of 
the Federal Reserve Board. The financial affairs of the 
Government as well as the issuing of legal tender, the deter- 
mination of the emergency policy of the banks of the country 
in the event of crises, and the distribution of banking reserves 
were all under the direction of this board. And the board 
was under the leadership of the Secretary of the Treasury 
and subject to the will of the people. It was indeed a new 
and a great thing. No other banking system in the world 
was quite like it. It was the emancipation of the Treasury. 
New York bankers could not in the future go to Washington, 
as Mr. J. P. Morgan had done in 1895^, and issue decrees 
to the president and people. Nor could there be hold-ups 
of the financial affairs of the country by business men who 
happened to have control of the New York bank reserves. 
If crops were to be moved, the Secretary of the Treasury and 
the new board would determine the movement and the loca- 
tion of the surplus moneys in the country. Credit was eman- 
cipated as well, for small business men would not need to have 
balances in certain New York controlled institutions in 
order to set up new enterprises. It was a redistribution 



'In spite of the fact that in England, France, and Germany government control was an e»- 
•ential feature of banking operations. 

•Carl Hovey, "The Life Story of J. Pierpont Morgan," Ch. VIII, 



142 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

of the power which surplus bank deposits and the con- 
sequent accumulation of bank credits had concentrated in a 
few hands.^ 

The system went into operation in November, 1914, when 
the disturbances of world finance due to the great war were 
becoming acute in the United States. Financiers of every 
group and interest were more than glad that the new system 
was ready, and there has been little hostile criticism of the law 
and its workings since it went into effect. The country has, 
after the mistakes and blunders of many banking and financ- 
ing experiments, including those of Hamilton, Calhoun, 
Biddle, Walker, and Chase, at last a plan of operation and 
control that is likely to prevent those extremes of economic 
panic and disaster which have made and ruined so many 
people in the past. 

Of similar general import was the Administration anti- 
trust measure of the winter and spring of 1914, a constructive 
amendment of the ineffective Sherman Act of 1890. It 
changed the Sherman Law by defining its terms, forbidding 
local price -fixing and exclusive agreements, and abolishing 
interlocking directorates in interstate corporations, railroads, 
banks, and trust companies wherever these came into con- 
nection with the Federal Reserve system. It established the 
Federal Trade Board which was to study and regulate the 
conduct of the interstate business of the countr3% except 
as to the railroads. Perhaps the most important provision 
of this anti-trust law was the definite exemption of labour 
organizations from its operations. Likewise farmers' organ- 
izations, not intended for profit, were declared not to be 
trusts in the sense of the law. Thus injunctions against 
strikes and boycotting and attacks upon farmers' organiza- 



•The best short account of the Federal Reserve system known to the writer is the article in 
the "Encyclopedia Americana," Vol. 3, pp. 181-188. 



THE GREAT REFORMS 143 

tions, so long subjects of bitter contentions, were rendered 
obsolete.^ 

The only important recommendation which the President 
made that was not enacted into law was that which proposed 
that the Interstate Commerce Commission should regulate 
the issue of securities by the railway companies. All through 
the year 1913 and almost to the end of 1914 Mr. Wilson held 
Congress together, pressed far-reaching measures upon their 
attention, and himself set the example of high devotion to 
the public interest. He assumed a gentle, optimistic tone in 
his communications to the legislators which was characteristic 
of him, although it was evident that he held men to their 
tasks and guided the lawmaking with a most resolute if not 
an iron hand. 

The great reforms had been definitely set up. The foreign 
affairs of the Nation had been given a new turn. Not since 
the Declaration of Independence had any leader of the 
country more clearly voiced the ideals which Americans loved 
to think they believed in. The new tariff law not only re- 
duced the general average to a lower level than the country 
had known since 1860, it placed wool, sugar, and meats upon 
the free list ; and many other articles of common consumption 
came in free or paid a low duty. The Government was defi- 
nitely master not only of its own finances, but it controlled 
and regulated the money and credits of the country, which 
had never been true before, nor were any of the great countries 
of Europe so free from the domination of their financial 
groups. And almost from the first even the bankers them- 
selves acknowledged that the national finances were safe. 
On the trust issue equally far-reaching measures had been 
enacted and there was every reason to believe that no future 
turn of party history would upset them. 

>F. A. Ogg, "National Progress," 229-232. 



144 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

The President was the unquestioned leader of Congress; 
his method had justified itself and there was ample reason 
to believe that the country approved. In every fresh appeal 
to Congress Wilson had urged that he was seeking only to 
heal the wounds of business or endeavouring to do what 
thoughtful men had long since agreed should be done. He 
disparaged no one. He assumed the agreement of even big 
business men with the purport of his reforms. When he was 
ready to make a new move in Congress, he asked the members 
of the appropriate committees to meet him for discussion. 
The result was a matured legislative plan which was generally 
enacted into law very much as had been suggested. Al- 
though he acknowledged that many of his party leaders 
were far from democratic, he assumed them to be disposed 
to give democracy a trial. If any of them threatened to be 
recalcitrant, it was quietly intimated that he would have to 
"take the matter to the people." Not since the days of 
Jefferson had there been such a complete master of men in 
Washington. 

Yet the great programme might fail. The industrial 
belt, the leaders of the great cities, the former Republican 
and Progressive party chieftains, insisted that Wilson was 
only a minority president. They composed the majority. 
Those who were behind the President were ridiculed as pro- 
vincial Southerners, as sectionalists seeking only sectional 
interests. Great industry, so powerful in all the Northern 
states, connected with the old diplomacy of Europe, in full 
control of most of the metropolitan press, putting out its 
many billions' worth of goods a year and intimately con- 
nected with the banking systems of the world, was by no 
means ready to surrender. The Boston Transcript said that 
the New England interests had been flayed, that the country 
must simply endure the tariff for a while. The bankers of 



THE GREAT REFORMS ' 145 

the Nation held a conference at Chicago when the Reserve 
plan was before Congress and presented their demands for a 
single great bank, and most of the papers urged to the out- 
break of the great war that the new law must be a failure. 
Would all that had been done prove a failure? 

Only an election could determine the answer to that ques- 
tion. There was no doubt that Wilson was popular, or 
that he had fulfilled the promises of his party in the campaign 
of 1912, or that his reforms were just and in accordance with 
democratic principles. It is not justice and democracy that 
determine the success or failure of public men. There must 
be no great accidents and there must be repeated victories 
at the polls. It has generally required three successful presi- 
dential elections in the United States to secure the success 
of any great reform movement. Could the minority Presi- 
dent meet that test? 



CHAPTER VIII 
WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 

BUT before the first electoral test of the Wilson Ad- 
ministration could be made, other and very grave problems 
pressed upon the President for solution. The German 
Kaiser had been wont to boast that nothing should happen 
anywhere in the world without his consent. And there was 
opportunity enough for German intervention in Mexico long 
before the break into Belgium in 1914. Although Wilson in- 
sisted in December, 1913, upon leaving the Mexicans to their 
own devices but continued the Taft embargo upon the sale 
of arms to the warring factions, European traders found ways 
to supply the needful arms and European statesmen recog- 
nized Huerta in spite of the President's known purpose never 
to do so. 

Before the winter of 1914 had passed Venustiano Car- 
ranza, strongly supported by "General" Villa, made rapid 
headway against the usurper. In the hope of bringing about 
a better state of things than Huerta promised, Wilson 
lifted the embargo on arms and other supplies on February 
3, 1914. This operated in favour of Carranza, and of course 
the Huertistas put forth their utmost efforts to maintain 
themselves. A few days after this move by the President, 
some bluejackets of Admiral Mayo's squadron, lying off the 
coast of Tampico, went ashore to buy gasoline. They were 
arrested. Although the sailors were promptly released. 
Mayo demanded a public apology in the form of a salute to 

146 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 147 

his flag. Huerta refused, and the matter was referred to 
Washington. Wilson now repeated the demand, and the 
dictator refused. A vigorous policy being set up, the 
President now presented an ultimatum which was ignored. 
When a German steamer bearing military supplies approached 
Vera Cruz a day or two later, the President ordered the 
port to be seized. On April 21st, the principal port of Mex- 
ico fell almost undefended into American hands.^ 

The followers of Huerta made violent outcry. General 
Carranza, a sort of protege of the United States, likewise 
made protest. Argentine, Brazil, and Chih looked upon the 
move as but the beginning of a war of conquest against 
Mexico. In spite of Wilson's earnest words at Mobile the 
preceding October, Latin -Americans everywhere doubted 
him. The President insisted that he was not warring upon 
Mexico and that he would do everything in his power 
to aid the distracted country. The so-called A.B.C. powers 
offered their assistance in the solution of the Mexican prob- 
lem. Wilson gladly accepted and on July 15th, Huerta aban- 
doned the country. On August 20th, Carranza entered the 
capital. It seemed that the long-desired end had been at- 
tained. But Villa now declared war upon his former friend 
and set about organizing northern Mexico in order to gain 
for himself the coveted presidency. Wilson was sorely 
perplexed. Before the end of the year Carranza was com- 
pelled to abandon the city of Mexico and chaos worse con- 
founded prevailed all over the country. Now the extreme 
imperialists of the United States renewed their press cam- 
paign for immediate intervention and for ultimate annexa- 
tion. Wilson refused to enter upon such a drastic policy. 

Once more the President had recourse to the governments 
of South America. Argentine, Brazil, ChiH, Bolivia, Uru- 

iBrief statement of these facts will be found in F. A. Ogg's "National Progress," 292-294. 



148 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

guay, and Guatemala sent delegates to a conference in Wash- 
ington in the hope that a satisfactory provisional govern- 
ment might be set up in Mexico. But Carranza regained 
control of the capital in October, 1915, and the various coun- 
tries concerned recognized him as the head of the de facto 
government of Mexico. Diplomatic relations were renewed; 
but Wilson expressed his doubt to Congress in December: 
"Whether we have benefited Mexico by the course we have 
pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own 
hands. We have shown that we will not take advantage of 
her in her distress."^ 

In the midst of the difficulties of the Mexican situation, 
and just after the German war broke upon the world, Mr. 
Wilson was called upon to endure a personal ordeal such 
as must have told upon any man. Mrs. Wilson, his first 
wife, was a woman of the old Southern school, a member, 
like himself, of a prominent Presbyterian family of Georgia. 
She had been the maker of their home at Princeton and had 
shared the honours and struggles of his University presidency. 
They had been the centre of much national interest when they 
went to the White House; and their simple, democratic 
household in Washington had still further endeared Mrs. 
Wilson to the country. Now she was taken ill. Her case 
became serious in the summer of 1914, but no relief could be 
found and she died on August 6th in the most exciting days 
of the great war. The whole world felt for the President, and 
right-thinking folk everywhere regretted that so true a wo- 
man and typical an American must be taken in the very 
beginning of her husband's marvellous career. The stricken 
husband followed the remains to Rome, Georgia, the little 
town where she had lived when young Wilson won her hand 
twenty-nine years before. 

^Senate Journal, 84th Congress, 1 Session, ft-7. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 149 

In the spring of 1914, when foreign pressure upon the 
Mexican embroglio seemed greater than the circumstances 
justified, Wilson sent Colonel Edward M. House, a very 
observant and thoughtful personal friend, to Berlin in the 
hope of ascertaining the purposes of belligerent German 
statesmen. The situation proved to be positively dangerous. 
At a great dinner high officials of the old regime talked to him 
as though war was at the very door. In Paris and London, on 
the contrary, the atmosphere was calm and the leaders would 
not believe that Germany meant anything more than the ac- 
customed bluster.^ But no one in Europe took the President 
seriously. They considered him an inexperienced idealist, if 
not a mere demagogue, and intimated that a year or two of 
experience would bring him to a more practical point of view. 

Colonel House returned, anxious as to the state of things, 
but hardly expecting the sudden outbreak that a few months 
was to reveal. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war 
on Russia for her support of the Serbian campaign against 
Austro-German aggression. The next day all Europe was con- 
fronted with what had long been feared, a world war. General 
von Kluck, commander of the right wing of the great German 
army, prepared to the last shoe-lace, marched directly upon 
Paris, the first objective of German military strategy, talked 
of and discussed since 1871 . Never was there a greater crisis, 
never before so vast a military force set in motion as if upon 
the "drop of the hat." Without hesitation or parley the 
Germans went through Belgium, giving military necessity as 
the excuse and adding cynically that treaties were but scraps 
of paper anyway.^ At Li^ge von Kluck was held for a short 
time; but he was only delayed. His army flung its right 



•Arthur Howden Smith, "The Real Colonel House," Chap. XIX. 

'It it only fair to say, however, that every great government engaged in the war acainst 
Germany, including the United blules, has violated the plataesl stipulatiou of treatiet. 



150 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

upon the French border in the neighbourhood of Namur and 
pressed hard upon every road toward the French capital. 
The initial move was to be completed in six weeks and from 
Paris terms were to be dictated to France before England 
could make her power felt. 

The French gathered troops in front of their capital, 
and the British sent their little army of a hundred thousand 
men to worry von Kluck's right flank. The English forces 
were annihilated; but by some miraculous means the French 
broke the German drive at the Marne during the early 
days of September. Von Kluck was compelled to retreat 
thirty or forty miles and entrench. The first act in the 
terrible tragedy closed. A second role was playing in the 
marshes of northeastern Germany where von Hindenburg 
drove hundreds of thousands of Russians to surrender in 
the Masurian lake region and won for himself the first 
place among German military men. At the same time 
Austria pressed in vain upon little Serbia. Cold weather 
came and the warring peoples of Europe settled down to 
their first winter in the trenches. 

Americans, all unaware of the tense state of things in the 
rest of the world, were amazed. They shuddered instinctively 
at the display of power by Germany. The excuse given for 
the invasion of Belgium, the idea that treaties were but scraps 
of paper, tended to make them opponents of the Kaiser and 
his army, if not of the German people. But the President 
declared that the country would be neutral and he even 
insisted upon neutrality of thought as well as word. Leading 
public men openly endorsed the policy, and Mr. Roosevelt 
told a visiting delegation of Belgians in the early autumn 
that no other line of procedure could be contemplated.^ 

»W. R. Thayer's "Theodore Roosevelt, an Intimate Biography," Boston, 1919, seems to glow 
this over; but the facts are too well known to be omitted. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 151 

The German Ambassador, Johann von Bernstorff, returned 
to Washington from a visit to BerHn in the autumn. He 
talked Hke a victor. Only northeastern France was to be 
annexed to Germany. But of course the French colonies 
would not be returned. The Monroe Doctrine would be 
respected as it applied to South America. Canada, how- 
ever, had not remained neutral and her fate would there- 
fore be settled in Berlin.^ It was plain that the fortunes 
of the United States would- be greatly affected by the German 
war, if Germany should succeed. 

At the same time Doctor Bernhard Dernburg, a former 
member of the German imperial cabinet and a man of high 
authority in his own country, began under the direction 
of the ambassador a campaign of propaganda that was 
designed to reconcile Americans to the new state of things 
in Europe. Scores, if not hundreds, of well-paid agents of 
Germany were turned loose upon the country to speak before 
university audiences, chambers of commerce, and other organ- 
izations in which German-Americans were influential mem- 
bers. It was but a renewal of the campaign which men 
like Professor Kuhnemann had conducted a few years before 
in the Middle West.^ 

The greater German professors, led by Eduard Meyer, 
not only declared that the German war was forced upon 
Germany; they urged in speeches and in magaeine ar- 
ticles that the war was another struggle like that of Rome 
and Carthage; that Germany was the modern Rome and 
England the modern Carthage that must be forever de- 
stroyed. The German clergy proclaimed it a holy war and 
American-born Lutherans could not resist the call to render 



^Literary Digest, November 7, 1914. Gives press quotations. 

» W. R. Thayer, " Life of John Hay, " II, Ch. 28, gives a good but exaggerated account of this 
9ropaganda. 



152 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

moral assistance. In fact, Germans everywhere flocked to 
their churches with unwonted zeal to pray for the Kaiser and 
world-subjugation.^ The Kaiser and the higher German 
ofiicers both of the army and the navy made constant appeals 
of this sort. Junkers, industrial leaders, commercial men, 
like Herr Ballin of Hamburg, socialists, and women of all 
classes boasted of the unity of Germany, of the sacred war, 
of the duty and privilege to serve so noble a cause. Purpose, 
grim as death, and ambition, high as that of the fallen 
angels themselves, were proclaimed from every public place 
in the Fatherland. It was imperial Germany at her worst. 
Would she succeed? Would she win American public opin- 



ion.^ 

That was, in fact, the great question. If she won, she 
would conquer the world. And there was every reason she 
should do so in 1914. For many years American students 
had been accustomed to study in German universities 
where indeed the best authorities in the world were to 
be found. Very many of these returned to their own coun- 
try unable to distinguish between the good and the bad in 
German civilization, and when the great war began they 
promptly took the side of autocracy.^ Naturally the 
close connection between American and German univer- 
sities led to the ready acceptance of the German world- 
propaganda in the elaborate system of exchange professor- 
ships that prevailed several years before 1914. The Ger- 
man Ambassador, Johann von Bernstorff, was justified in 
the feeling that his country was very close to the academic 
world when within five years after his appointment to Wash- 



■Evidenced in almost all the newspapers that came from Germany. Larger American 
libraries have photostat files of German papers for the war years. 

*Some of the most distinguished of Americau scholars annoumcd in public speech that 
France and Knglund were decadent nations and hence their time had come. 



WARS .\ND ROIOURS OF WARS 153 

ington he received the doctorate of laws from ten leading N/ 

American universities.^ 

In the business world it was not different. Germany 
was practically one vast business establishment, so per- 
fect was its organization. American manufacturers were 
captivated with the idea of German efficiency which was 
the result of the German habit of subordination and in- 
dustry. Few men labour so willingly and cheerfully under 
direction as do the Germans. This delighted men whose 
only object in life is the making of money. Consequently 
chambers of commerce and industrial associations in the 
country made a study of the German method. German 
consuls and German tradesmen in American cities were 
the most popular of all foreign business men. They at- 
tended formal dinners as guests of honour and they were 
not backward in receiving the tributes of their hosts to their 
country and its ideal institutions. The greatest of American 
bankers was received at court when he went to Berlin, and he 
showed his appreciation by giving the empress a necklace of 
incomparable beauty.- 

The German vogue was even more evident in the United 
States army. From the time of the Franco-Prussian war 
American military men admired the German system. Gen- 
erals Sherman and Sheridan set the pace. Major-General 
Emory Upton visited the Prussian camps and military estab- 
lishments soon after the close of the American Civil War and 
made reports urging the necessity of American imitation of 
the perfect machinery of destruction he had observed and 
studied. Elihu Root, under the direction of President Roose- 
velt, set up an American general staff quite like that which 

'A list of the universities conferring the degree will be found in "Who's Who in America,'* 
Vol. IX. 

'I give only one example of this. There were many Americans of wealth who paid court 
ID effective ways to the imperial regime in I^crlin. 



154 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

managed the German part of the recent war. And young 
officers were set to work mapping imaginary campaigns in 
foreign countries, just as young German officers had done 
for decades. Mihtary historical societies were organized, 
mihtary magazines pubhshed, and even mihtary history de- 
partments were set up in old academic institutions. Major- 
General Upton's "Military Policy of the United States," a 
book which ridiculed the whole history of the country on the 
ground of its martial inefficiency, was made a sort of bible at 
West Point.^ It is still the favourite book of all the army 
camps. Its Ideal is the conscription system which had 
wrought so much for Germany in the Bismarckian period. 
Before the great war the whole tone of the army was Prussian, 
even down to the styles of boots that officers must wear to 
distinguish them from "buck" privates. 

Of even more importance was the influence of imperial Ger- 
manyamongthe large German populationof the United States. 
Great numbers of Germans had emigrated to the country to 
escape the rigours of the growing aristocratic system of their 
native land. Very many of these, especially those who came 
before the Civil War, were idealists of a high type. Carl 
Schurz was probably the best representative of these. They 
thought to find in America the freedom, liberty, as men used 
to say, that men could not have in Europe. But Germans 
are industrious and enterprising. They quickly made small 
or great fortunes. A man with a fortune has a hard struggle 
keeping faith with ideals or democracy. The Germans in the 
United States were tempted above their ability to resist. 

Throughout the long boom period of 1866 to 1914, every- 
body in the North seemed to get rich. A man had but to 



iThis work was the result of the writer's visit to Germany. General Sherman wished it 
published at public expense about 188i. Elihu Root secured its publication as a publi'- docu- 
ment iu 190a 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 155 

buy a few acres of ground, fairly distributed about the grow- 
ing cities, and he would grow rich in spite of himself. And 
as the Americans grew rich, they paid slight homage to that 
democracy their fathers had worshipped. They rather set 
themselves to the task of thwarting democracy. The Ger- 
mans could not but follow the example. There was not a 
dynasty worship in America, but there was a cult of success, 
of devotion to riches that equalled in its influence upon success- 
ful newcomers that worship of the Hohenzollerns which char- 
acterized Bismarckian Germany. The whole drift of the two 
generations which followed 1866, especially in the North, 
was away from democracy.^ The Germans were easily 
caught in the drift. It meant the breaking up of whatever 
of idealism they had been able to maintain. 

Moreover, successful Germans loved to revisit the ancient 
fatherland. There they made judicious display of their 
easily won wealth, and their kinsmen and friends of kins- 
men looked on with ravished countenances. They talked 
of the scores of great German names in the American 
world of business and these talked of the fine social system 
which Germany maintained, a land where every man knew 
his place and servants behaved themselves as servants should 
behave. It was a case of mutual admiration.^ German- 
Americans ceased to condemn the rigorous class system of 
their home country. They rather liked it since they had 
become wealthy. The better-known Germans who returned 
were received in aristocratic circles. Carl Schurz, who had a 
price set upon his head in 1850, returned often to Berlin in 
later years and was honoured by imperialism itself. He lost 
his hatred of autocracy. He rejoiced in the greatness of the 



i"The Education of Henry Adams," Boston, 1918, is throughout a stinging comment upon 
this fact 

'"Memoirs of Henry Villard," II, 348-319. 



156 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

power that had once clamoured for his blood. And there 
were thousands of the same faith. American-born Germans 
became better Germans than their fathers had been, even 
though they did not speak the German language with 
ease. 

When university presidents talked to newspaper reporters 
about the honours they received from the Kaiser, when the 
greatest business men were obsequious in Berlin, and when 
high army officers but reflected the Prussian model, how 
might ordinary German- Americans escape the contagion? 
They did not. Only the poorer element, the workers in the 
mills, and the farmers, neither of whom ever cut any great 
figure on return trips to their ancient homes, escaped, al- 
though they, too, naturally felt a warmer place in their hearts 
for Germany than they could feel even for the best liberalism 
of which they could learn anything in England or France. 
The way was surely prepared for the German propaganda 
when the great war drew nigh. And never did a country make 
more use of its opportunity than did the German imperialists 
before "der Tag."^ A German- American alliance was organ- 
nized to press the cause of Germany upon all possible occa- 
sions, Germanistic societies were set up and distinguished 
Americans of native ancestry were made honorary mem- 
bers. Professors of the German language and literature in 
the universities failed to distinguish between the subjects 
they taught and the cause the Hohenzollern dynasty repre- 
sented. Members of the older New England, and even 
Southern, families became identified with these societies and 
better Germans than democrats. There was indeed good 
reason for men to believe that hundreds of thousands of Ger- 



Wer Tag was a term frequently used by German students and others to indicate when the 
world war was to begin. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 157 

man-Americans would accept the unprecedented Delbrueck 
law of 1913, which set up a plan of double citizenship for Ger- 
mans in foreign countries whereby they could be citizens under 
other sovereignties but still serve the Kaiser.^ 

It became plain before the end of 1914 that the mainte- 
nance of neutrality would be quite as diflScult in the early 
twentieth century as it had been in the late eighteenth when 
the French revolution set Europe on fire. 

But neutrality became as difficult a matter from another 
angle as it was from that of the German-American propa- 
ganda. Business men quickly saw the opportunity of a 
great war. They sought at once to sell their goods in every 
market of the world. Britain set up a blockade against the 
central powers, Germany and Austria. Here was indeed 
cause for trouble. The price of foodstuffs rose at once. Ger- 
many received her share for a time, but when the imperial 
government established a food control, England declared 
foodstuffs consigned to Germany contraband of war. Meat 
packers and grain exporters at once made complaint in Wash- 
ington. Wilson argued with the British authorities as ur- 
gently as the precedents of the Civil War would allow. When 
England refused to yield, prominent American lawyers went 
to London to fight the blockade. They did not quite succeed, 
but they became potential friends of Germany in the days 
that were to come. Wilson pressed more strenuously for the 
rights of trade in the first and second years of the war than be- 
came an ardent friend of democracy; but business men and 
their allies the bankers can make difficulties for government 
in any country that must be avoided or parried.^ 



'" Gesetzsammlung fur die Konigliche Preuttiiehe Staaten," 1911-1014, pp. 654-57. Discussion 
of the law pro and con in Yale Law Review No. 27, p. 812 and 479, et teq. See also American 
Journal of International Law, 1914, 214-17. 

'AH through 1915 the Secretary of State argued with the British Foreign Office about the 
rights of neutrals. 



158 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

The war, nevertheless, gave a great impetus to American 
foreign trade. Whatever was lost in the direct . commerce 
with Germany was regained in the volume of trade with 
near-by neutrals, and the export of munitions to France and 
England soon amounted to hundreds of millions per year. 
The annual output of industry when Wilson entered the 
presidency was somewhat more than twenty billions. ^ The 
total of foreign exports and imports was about two billions a 
year. In 1917, when Wilson recommended war, the output 
of American industry was thirty billions a year and the total 
of foreign trade approached six billions.^ When the great war 
began American business men and corporations owed Euro- 
peans at least four billions and the gold balances were a little 
difficult to maintain. When the country went to war in 
1917, all the four billions of debt had been paid, Europe 
owed large sums to Americans, and the great gold reserves 
of the world were on this side of the Atlantic. What mat- 
tered it now if the tariff were reduced and the banks were 
brought under strict Federal control .f* It was no longer a 
problem of competing imports that frightened industrial 
men. The representatives of Britain, France, Italy, Russia, 
and Japan hung about the antechambers of New York banks 
seeking loans upon any terms. Deprived of a directing hand 
in national affairs, the leaders of industry and the heads of 
the banks simply took over for a time the economic affairs of 
the world. Was there ever such a revolution wrought over- 
night? 

At once the workers felt the swell. Immigration stopped. 
The demand for fresh labour increased two-fold. The suc- 
cess of the allied governments of western Europe depended 
upon the intensity and regularity of American labour. If 



'"Abstract of the Census," 1910, page 445. 
'"American Yearbook," 1917, Chapter XII. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 159 

oar railway system failed to bear the new burdens of trade, 
the Germans would win the war. All "slack" labour of the 
cities was taken up. More men worked at night than 
ever before. Daylight saving was resorted to. Increasing 
numbers of women entered industry. Servants became 
scarce and the prices for domestic service quickly rose to the 
point that middle-class folk could not afford servants. Gen- 
tle hands learned the uses of "Dutch cleanser" and college 
professors scrubbed bathroom floors instead of chasing golf 
balls over eighteen-hole links. The presence of a household 
servant became again evidence of economic rather than social 
standing. 

Of course Labour organized. Samuel Gompers, the presi- 
dent of the American Federation of Labour, was almost as 
important a figure in the world as Woodrow Wilson. Labour 
unions increased their membership beyond all former totals 
and Labour leaders realized for the first time in American 
history that they were real powers in the world. ^ Farm work- 
ers from the West and Negroes from the cotton fields were 
drawn by the hundreds of thousands to the industrial cities. 
In many regions people talked of importing Chinese coolies 
to aid in the rougher tasks of the country. In Chicago the 
Negro problem became real and out of it grew a political ma- 
chine that is not likely to break down in years to come, an 
organization of German-Swedish-Negro and even Irish voters 
that quickly showed its strength. In east St. Louis riots 
resulted from the great influx of Negroes. But in spite of all 
the changes and the disturbances and the constantly rising 
cost of labour, the industrial pace was greatly hastened, rail- 
road cars carried bigger loads than ever before, and the grain- 
and meat-producing states increased their exports, if only by 
a small margin. Only the cotton and sugar producers failed 

'"American Yearbook," 1917, Chapter XV. 



} 



180 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

to find workers to keep up their former pace. Women and 
boys worked in the cotton fields, ran elevators and trolleys. 
Every class of people learned what a small place is the modern 
world; they began to see in spite of themselves that the 
United States was involved in the European struggle. 

In the midst of this swirl of financial, industrial, and agricul- 
tural readjustment what was a mere government to do? 
Wilson sought to meet the needs of industry by pressing upon 
Congress in the autumn of 1914 a shipping bill which, if 
passed, must have supplied the country with the sorely 
needed tonnage of 1918. Not one tenth of the exports of 
the country could be carried in American ships. Britain 
was compelled to employ half her shipping for war purposes. 
The President and the Secretary of the Treasury urged Con- 
gress from 1914 to 1916 to pass some measure. Congress 
resisted. Even the representatives of Great Britain objected 
lest the United States buy the German tonnage then in 
American waters! Eastern senators who, in 1919, attacked 
the President every day for unwisdom upon every possible 
subject then attacked him for proposing to do the very thing 
that all parties united to do later at a cost of billions of dol- 
lars.^ It was pitiable to witness the jealousies of otherwise 
good men in a crisis like that; but it is perhaps ever so in 
democratic countries. 

Wilson was more successful in another of his great re- 
forms. From the very first days of his term he had con- 
templated the enactment of a farm loan, or farmers' aid, law 
that should enable tenants to purchase land for themselves. 
Since 1880 tenantry had been rapidly increasing in every 
state of the Union. If a law could be passed which would 
give poor, inarticulate folk the benefit of low rates of interest, 
instead of the very high rates they had ever paid, and long- 

>" American Yearbook." 1917, ChapterlXIX. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 161 

teriil credit, even very simple men might become inde- 
pendent and thus make good democratic elements in the 
republic. 

On July 17, 1916, the Farm Loan Act was passed. It pro- 
vided for farmers' banks in each of the Federal Reserve 
districts, but in different cities from those in which the re- 
serve banks were located. It set up machinery for the 
ascertaining of land values, the needs of farmers, and the 
loans to those who wished to purchase lands. The Federal 
land banks were to have a capital each of $750,000 which 
might be increased to meet the growth of business. At 
the head of the system there was a Federal Farm Loan Board 
which was to guide the system, without intervention of the 
Federal courts, and recommend to the Government changes 
of the law and of the policy thus initiated. It was another of 
those constructive measures, like the Clayton Antitrust Law, 
which provided the machinery to make effectual the measures 
legally set up. And the people of the country, acting through 
the Secretary of the Treasury who was to be the head of the 
Farm Loan Board, would thus supervise the law and lend 
assistance to the men who make the nation's bread. ^ 

Another proposal of equally far-reaching effect was already 
before Congress. The war increased men's incomes in un- 
precedented manner. New millionaires were created by 
the thousands. Yet the Government's income declined 
more than a hundred millions a year. Politicians, who were 
interested in the old regime, declared the shortage was due 
to the bad Democratic tariff. Thoughtful men everywhere 
knew otherwise. But the instant needs of the Treasury 
compelled a restoration of tariff taxes on certain items, like 
sugar, in order to meet actual deficits. Wilson acquiesced 



»A good brief account of the Federal Farm Loan Act will be found in "The Encyclope<li8 
Americana," II, p. 78. 



162 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

in this doubtful makeshift only to press the more effectively 
for a change of the financial policy of the country. Since 
the days of Washington indirect taxes had been the resort of 
the Treasury, for the reason that the Federal government, as 
compared with the state governments, was not sufficiently 
popular to endure a heavy direct tax. 

In 1893, President Cleveland caused an income tax to be 
enacted. The Supreme Court vetoed it, as I have already 
pointed out. In 1913 an amendment to the Federal consti- 
tution was ratified. A change of the national tax policy and 
a practical abandonment of the tariff as a means of raising 
revenue had already been made tentatively in the Under- 
wood tariff. But a party that had not a full popular ma- 
jority behind it might not so readily do what all political 
scientists knew to be right and proper. Now that the Euro- 
pean war had so completely upset the old system and the 
national psychology was directed at other and very vital 
measures, the time was ripe for the change. In September, 
1916, Congress enacted upon the suggestion of the President 
the first income tax law that was really aimed at the reform 
of the old system. 

This law left the minimum untaxed income at $3,000 as 
did the former statute. But it laid surtaxes upon incomes 
that ranged above $40,000, upon the profits of munitions 
makers, and especially upon inheritances from estates of a 
million or above. The intention of the law was to do what 
justice would have required to be done in 1789, to raise the 
larger part of the national income directly from those who 
were most able to pay and not indirectly from consumers who 
must pay upon the necessaries of life.^ At any other time 
in American history, with the possible exception of the Civil 
War years, the passage of any such law would have ruined 

i"U. S. Statutes at Large," XXXIX, Pt. 1, page 2. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 163 

the leaders who sponsored it. As it was, the new poHcy was 
declared to be the product of sectional politicians, like Mr. 
Claude Kitchin, who sought to lay the burden of national 
taxes upon the Northern people. In the very nature of 
things the tax must be paid by the industrial communities.^ 
But for the confusion of war time there would have been a 
bitter attack upon Wilson for this measure. 

The new income tax law was hardly on the statute book 
before a worse thing befell. The scarcity of labour and the 
vital role of workingmen in the great war gave American 
labour leaders an importance, as I have already indicated, 
that no president could ignore; in fact, no government of 
Europe dared ignore the workers there, not even the Kaiser 
himself. In the summer of 1916 the brotherhoods of Amer- 
ican railway engineers, firemen, and conductors determined 
to bring on a strike which should tie up every business in the 
country, a strike which would, in fact, have given Germany 
the victory if persisted in for a considerable period. The 
railway men asked only for an eight-hour day. The railway 
managers refused to grant the demand. The country be- 
came intensely anxious. The representatives of the allied 
governments of western Europe were not less anxious. If 
the strike came there would be no relief through injunctions of 
Federal courts, as had been the case in the past, for the recent 
Clayton Antitrust Law exempted strikes from that sort of 
interference. The President asked for an arbitration as , 
provided by existing law. The Labour leaders, perfectly con- 
scious of their strength, refused to arbitrate.' On August 
29th, when only a week remained before the crisis would 
begin, Wilson went before Congress and almost demanded 



''The working of the law may be studied in "Statistics of Income." Published by the 
Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1918. 
'F. A. Ogg, "National Progress," 353-3G0. 



164 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the immediate passage of what has since been known as the 
Adamson Law. 

In his proposals, Wilson definitely took the side of La- 
bour in its long struggle with Capital. He urged the eight- 
hour day, an increase of the powers of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission over railway matters so that an inves- 
tigation of the value of railway properties might be made to 
determine future rates, the prohibition of future strikes on 
railways without a prior public investigation, and the author- 
ization of the president to seize and operate the roads in 
case of military necessity. In such contingency the Govern- 
ment was to take control of the railways, command railway 
employes, and keep the channels of interstate commerce open 
very much as the general of an army commands in time of 
war. 

Radical and far-reaching as these recommendations were, 
they became law wnthin the short time of a week with the 
exception that Congress refused to set up machinery for deal- 
ing with strikes. There was instant need of all he asked. The 
government of the whole people could not allow the country 
to be brought into utter chaos either by strikers or owners of 
railway properties. In this measure, the President took for 
the time the point of view of Labour; but he also tried to 
provide a definite legal procedure in case of future difficulty. 
The Government under the Adamson Law as originally pro- 
posed would have found its position secure and Labour must 
have recognized its duty to the public.^ 

Very conservative men who had never recognized Labour 
as an organized body of workers hastened to procure from 
the courts a pronouncement upon the constitutionality of 
the law. Certain Labour men were quite willing to see the 



'A brief of the law will be found in the "American Yearbook," 1916, p. 20. The act is in 
"U. S. SUtutes." XXXIX, pt. 1, pp. Til-l-ii. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS IGo 

matter tested for they did not like the idea of so complete a 
recognition of the power of the Government to control work- 
ingmen as was given in the law. Judge Hook of the United 
States circuit court of Kansas City declared the law uncon- 
stitutional on November 22, 1916. The case was quickly 
taken to the Supreme Court which, perhaps influenced by the 
atmosphere of war, decided in favour of the law. The long- 
disputed question of the power of the Government over busi- 
ness and labour came to an end. The interests of the people 
was pronounced to be the supreme end of government.^ 

From outward appearance the President had won and it 
looked as if all branches of the Government were at last in 
harmony. Never had the courts seemed to catch the pace 
of the country quite so well. It was, in fact, not so harmoni- 
ous as it appeared to the world. American participation 
in the great war was so near that more people began to feel 
the spirit of cooperation. Indeed there were other questions 
on which disagreement and bitter partisanship were evident. 

The settlement of the Mexican upheaval which seemed to 
have been made in the autumn of 1915 was only tentative. 
In the midst of the German war the Kaiser, Ambassador von 
Bernstorff , and the German minister in Mexico did what they 
could to disturb the relations of the countries in order that the 
United States might have troubles enough at home and hence 
not be able to ship so much ammunition to Europe. A worse 
difficulty was that which imperialists of the United States 
created who wished to compel the Government to intervene in 
Mexico and ultimately take possession of the country. Many 
newspapers never lost an opportunity to make difficulty 
for the President.^ And Villa was always ready to receive 



>The decision turned upon a vote of five to four, but unlike other dose votea of the court in 
the past, this one seems to have been accepted as final by the country. 
^lAteraxy Digest, July 6, 1916. Give« newspaper commeat. _ 



166 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

assistance or encouragement in his endeavours to unseat 
Carranza, 

In March, 1916, Villa led several hundred of his motley 
soldiers across the border and fell unawares upon the little 
town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing several inhabitants 
and doing great damage to property. Had the time come 
at last for that long-sought intervention? Would the Presi- 
dent siu-render to the more selfish elements of his own country 
and " clean up Mexico " ? The Chicago Tribune now declared 
that Mexico, was a ripe apple, ready for the picking. Senator 
Fall of New Mexico and the Governor of Texas thought the 
time had come to make an end of their unruly neighbour. 
Wilson, still intent upon leaving Mexico to solve her own 
problems, sent Brigadier-General John J. Pershing with a 
small army to punish Villa. The wily Mexican chieftain 
could not be found. A second raid occurred in May, 1916, 
while the American Government Vas negotiating with Car- 
ranza in solemn manner about the anomalous situation. The 
President then called upon the border states to get their 
militia in readiness. The National Guard was next sent to 
the Southern border to drill and be held in readiness for 
eventualities. Before the summer closed about 150,000 men 
were called into service, and both the Germans abroad and 
the imperialists at home expected the United States would 
become involved in a troublesome war in Mexico.^ 

But Wilson simply patrolled the long frontier and sent 
minor expeditions into Mexico to punish raids and keep the 
peace, if such a state of things could be called peace. Villa 
continued to elude every effort to capture him and remained 
a disturbing factor in the international situation till the very 



'All the periodicals and newspapers give evidence of this. F. A. Ogg, in "National Pro^gress," 
302-304, gives a good summary of the state of things although his treatment of the President'i 
policy is rather grudging. 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 167 

entry of the United States into the European war. Carranza, 
the recognized head of the Mexican Government, protested 
all the while that he would bring about a settled state of 
things and put a stop to the raids into the United States. 
His position was indeed difficult. President Wilson met the 
Carranza authorities more than half way, continued to allow 
munitions to be shipped to the city of Mexico to be used 
against Villa, and agreed to various conferences looking to a 
solution of the difficulties on the frontier. The first of these 
conferences was held at El Paso from April 29 to May 2, 1916. 
But as the Mexicans demanded immediate withdrawal of 
troops without giving any evidence that they would be able 
to maintain peace on their side of the international border 
nothing came of the discussions. 

In a long statement to Carranza of June 20th, President Wil- 
son rehearsed the whole Mexican situation. This explana- 
tion of the American policy was likewise given to the repre- 
sentatives of the other Latin governments in Washington.* 
It shows, above all, President Wilson's patience and set pur- 
pose not to interfere in Mexican affairs. He would have the 
Mexicans set their own house in order. He would even 
sacrifice the just and reasonable interests of Americans in the 
troubled region rather than render aid to the rapacious de- 
mands of imperialists who wished to exploit and even annex 
the country. Carranza replied to this appeal with a request 
for a joint commission to work out a solution of the Mexican 
difficulties. 

The proposition was accepted. Three Mexican commis- 
sioners met Messri. Franklin K. Lane, George Gray, and 
John R. Mott first at New London and later at Atlantic 
City during the late summer and autumn of 1916. Many 
matters connected with the long Mexican tragedy were 

'"American Yearbook." 1916, 82-84. 



168 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

discussed frankly and an agreement arrived at on November 
24th. But General Carranza still manifested a jealousy and a 
petty disposition now to accept and now to reject arrangements 
made by the commissioners. Before the end of the year he 
definitely announced that nothing was accepted, and all the 
negotiations of the preceding autumn came to naught. But 
since the chronic disorders of the Mexican frontier were im- 
proving, President Wilson was constrained to leave matters 
there to later developments. In all these negotiations it 
was evident not only that the President wished to be just 
and fair but that General Carranza had to do with a people 
that was poor, ignorant, and convinced that the people of the 
United States meant to seize their resources and even the 
country itself. During three quarters of a century the con- 
duct of the Government in Washington had given excuse 
for such fears. But bigger issues than those of the Mexican 
frontier were daily pressing for solution. 

Busy as the country was in 1915 with the Mexican com- 
plications, with the growing labour disturbances due to the 
great war, with the manufacture of munitions, and the in- 
creasing difficulty of maintaining neutrality in such a war as 
Germany insisted upon conducting, there came a personal 
romance in the President's life. And a romance in the White 
House must always interest the people of the country. On 
December 18, 1915, Mr. Wilson was married in simple but 
dignified ceremony to Mrs. Edith Boiling Gait, a prominent 
woman of Washington City and a member of an old Virginia 
family. The couple went away for a short stay at the famous 
Hot Springs of Virginia, where Virginians had spent honey- 
moons for a century or more. Then the second Mrs. Wilson 
settled down to the life of the White House and to making 
for the sore-troubled President the best home of which she 
was capable, a service of real importance to the country for 



WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 169 

Mr. Wilson is the most domestic of men and loves above all 
a quiet and gentle fireside. In spite of little jealousies that 
seem to have disturbed the minds of some society folk of New 
York and Washington itself, any one who has known anything 
of the inside life of the President's home will bear witness to 
its perfect beauty and taste. There the family circle is simply 
the family circle, and Mrs, Wilson is and has been every 
day the servant of the country in that she has smoothed the 
few hours the harassed President has spent these last five 
years in the quiet of his household. 

Little as the marriage of the President properly has to do 
with the President's official duties, so many people showed a 
growing interest in Mrs. Wilson that she accompanied him 
on his tour of the country in January of 1916 when he sought 
to know the mind of the people about the great war and 
possible preparations for American participation. She was 
received with great enthusiasm in Chicago and elsewhere. 
Since that time she has been an almost constant companion 
of Mr. Wilson on his trips, to the Paris conference and on his 
Western tour on behalf of the league of nations. Even the 
marriage was not without influence in the campaign of 1916 
when so many things were thrust into a situation already 
too tangled for most folk to comprehend with ease. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE ELECTION OF 1916 

AFTER all the remarkable laws that President Wilson 
was able to induce Congress and the industrial section of the 
country to pass and accept, it was by no means certain that 
he would be reelected and thus enabled to finish his task and 
leave the nation convalescent from its half century of eco- 
nomic debauch. Wilson knew, as any political scientist knows, 
that four years in office, either in the United States or Eng- 
land, is not enough to set a great reform movement firmly 
upon the ways of history. The platform on which Wilson 
was elected contained a "plank" which denounced second 
terms in the White House. There is no doubt that Mr. 
Bryan who wrote the platform believed then in the single- 
term idea. Wilson did not believe in it and before he was 
inaugurated he boldly, if not then publicly, declared, in a letter 
to be submitted to Democratic members of Congress, that he 
would oppose the constitutional amendment then being pre- 
pared limiting every president to a single terra. ^ 

The ideal thing would have been for the President and 
his party to submit their work to the country and ask a return 
to power on the promise that they would try to complete the 
task. They certainly had kept the promises of the cam- 
paign of 1912. The tariff had been reduced. There was an 



'Henry Jones Ford, "Woodrow Wilson," 319. It may be worth while to remember that 
Jackson made his campaign of 1838 very largely upon the single-term idea. His violation of 
the public pledge was a great cause of the crisis with South Carolina, 183-2-1833. 

170 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 171 

expert tariff board to study the tariff and help common men 
to understand the subject. The finances of the country had 
really been reformed and there was a national banking board 
to make the reforms effective. The old trust muddle had 
been improved and there was a board of moderate men to 
study business and make recommendations as to what should 
be done with corporations that contrive unsocial ends. 
There were many other and even very important things 
being done in the same spirit as the various national con- 
ventions were assembling in the summer of 1916. Wilson 
had certainly a good case. No other president ever had a 
better one.^ 

But, Wilson, the life-long student of domestic problems,) 
the reformer of industrial abuses, was not to be tried upon 
his merits. The great war in Europe broke upon him in the 
midst of his exacting tasks. He must of necessity become 
an expert in the complicated and age-long political and social 
struggles of Germany, France, and England. There was no 
escape from it, and he knew that no chancellery in Europe had 
anything more than polite respect for him or his aspirations. 
He was to them a novice; perhaps he would become a menace, 
if he continued to lead so great a part of the modern world as 
the United States.^ 

( It was this dread of being diverted from his main business, ) 
this dread of becoming entangled in the meshes of European 
affairs that lent so much earnestness to his repeated an- 
nouncements of American neutrality. But he could not be 
neutral ; the country had passed the stage in its history where 
it could remain aloof when world wars were being waged. I 
have shown how great was the industrial response to the war, 

iRead Henry Adams's, "History of the United States," New York, 1889, III, Chapter XV. 
for a parallel. 

'The knowledge of this European opinion of himself was one of the reasons for Wilson'a 
profKtfed absolute neutrality so bitterly condemned by some Americans. 



172 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

how many billions of dollars were being diverted toward 
American cofiFers by the war. The British blockade, becom- 
ing more effective every day, barred the way of American 
goods to Germany and even to neutral countries. Hoke 
Smith and a score of Southern senators and representatives 
urged him to protest against the blockade. Representatives 
of the packers of Chicago and the farmers of the Northwest 
urged him to open the way to hungry markets for their goods. 
No matter how clearly he as a historian might recall the policy 
of Abraham Lincoln on the problems of blockades — and the 
British policy in 1914 was almost identical with that of the 
United States in 1861— he must respond to the loud demands 
of business men and farmers who cared little for history or pre- 
cedents. He made his fight during the autumn of 1914 and 
the winter of 1915 against all the more drastic phases of the 
British blockade, against British interference with cargoes 
bound for neutral ports, but known to be on the way to 
Germany; against searching American mail pouches, al- 
though he knew the Germans in the United States were send- 
ing money or credits to their kinsmen in Europe; against 
blacklisting American commercial houses, even when these 
were known to be German firms to all intents and purposes. 
It was his duty ; he did it as best he could, although, as a man 
of insight, he must have felt that he was weakening the arm 
of the one great power that barred the way of imperial Ger- 
many to world mastery.^ 

But Germany could not leave matters to take their course 
either in Europe or in America. Once having drawn the sword 
she must win or have all mankind later call her to account 
for the cruel philosophy of might which she had taught since 
Bismarck. The Kaiser in a special letter to the President 



iThe protests will be fouud in Robinson and West, " The Foreign Poliry of Woodro w Wilson," 
230, et s€(i. 



THE ELECTION OF 1910 17S 

appealed to Americans to witness the German innocence of 
the British and Belgian charges of cruelty and want of good 
faith. Wilhelm talked and wrote in those days as though he 
were fighting a crusade for some noble cause, and the German 
people prayed and preached as though they were the chosen 
people of all the world. They could not even allow a ques- 
tion of their high and humane motives in the neutral world. 
They set to work to counteract the effects of the British 
blockade. They set up purchasing agencies in the United 
States; they made connections with American and even 
Canadian banking houses for the transfer of credits; they 
formed great associations in all the leading cities of the 
United States whose business it was to aid the German am- 
bassador in Washington in everything he undertook. They 
set up newspapers, bought old newspapers, made connections 
with William Randolph Hearst, organized university pro- 
fessors to speak for the German cause, and held labour meet- 
ings to protest against all wars. The leading brewers united 
with the University organization to protest against the ship- 
ment of arms to the Allies, to persuade members of Congress 
to lay an embargo upon the shipment of munitions to Europe, 
and they made desperate efforts to get the ear of the Presi- 
dent himself. The millions of money raised by loans among 
German-Americans or sent directly from Berlin was used 
in this work or in fomenting strikes, laying bombs in manu- 
facturing plants, upon ships about to depart for England, or 
even in the capitol in Washington.^ Representative men, 
like Frank Buchanan of Illinois, a member of the House; 
Charles Nagel of St Louis, a former member of the Cabinet, 
and many others lent enthusiastic aid to this work to the very 
day that the United States entered the great war. 

'Names of men involved or deeds actually performed will be found in "Hearings" of the 
Judiciary Committee of the Senate, 65th Congress, 2nd and 3rd Sessions. Three volumes of 
vaJuable testimony. 



174 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

But these measures were not suflBcient. On February 
6, 1915, the German Government proclaimed a submarine 
blockade of the British Isles. After the 18th of February 
commanders of submarines were to sink on sight the ships 
of the allied peoples and neutral ships must take care lest 
they, too, fall victims to the new ruthlessness. It was a 
question whether British and neutral seamen could be fright- 
ened from the ocean, not so much an expectation that Ger- 
man commanders would be compelled to continue this bloody 
work of sinking friend and foe upon ships going about their 
lawful business. It was expected that men would simply 
cease taking the risks and save themselves, leaving England 
to^starve or yield. 

Wilson made earnest protest on February 10th. Germany 
must take care not to destroy American hves or sink American 
ships. Ten days later he sent a memorandum to both Ger- 
many and England asking them to give up submarines and 
mines, except in and about harbours, and to cease the cruel 
practice of employing neutral flags as decoys. He even asked 
Britain to allow foodstuffs to be sent into Germany for the 
civil population under German guarantee that it should not 
be sent to the armies. ^ If these propositions had been ac- 
cepted, Germany must have won the war and the President's 
own policy must have given him poignant regret. 

But while the President held this rather gentle if dan- 
gerous course, the opposition prodded him daily to compel 
England to lift her blockade. Business communities whose 
leaders most keenly feared the German menace were the 
loudest in their demands. The Boston Transcript urged the 
Government to protest more vigorously; the Pittsburg 
Leader wished shipments of all kinds stopped, then the war 
would come to an end, its editor insisted; even the New York 

'Robinson and West, "Foreign Polity of Woodrow Wilson," 215-46. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 175 

World declared all neutral rights were being sacrificed.^ 
Where Wilson was most bitterly hated, press opinion seemed 
to condemn the loudest his moderate policy toward England. 

In the midst of this chaos came the news on May 7, 1915, 
that the Lusitania, one of the great transatlantic liners, 
had been sunk off the coast of Ireland and that more 
than a hundred American lives had been lost. A few days 
later came the story from Germany that the German 
people were rejoicing at the fine stroke of its submarine 
captain. 2 Certainly the German- American press, including 
the Staats-Zeitung of New York, defended the act. Americans 
as a rule shuddered. They had not believed that the Germans 
would ever be as cruel as their public announcements pro- 
claimed. The Germans were thus compelled to go on since 
neither the British sailors nor the workers upon neutral ships 
would confess themselves cowards and keep off the seas. 
The German announcements that it was to be another Rome- 
Carthage struggle were coming true. Those Americans who 
knew little about Europe and only the day before were as- 
sailing Wilson for supposed surrender to England^ now asked 
themselves soberly what would be the state of a world under 
the hegemony of a nation that rejoiced in the Lusitania per- 
formance as heroic. 

Wilson restrained public excitement. He allowed the 
phrase " too proud to fight" to slip into a speech he made to a 
gathering of immigrants in Philadelphia a day or two later.'* 
His keen judgment of the state of things in the United States, 
as well as in the world, enabled him to see how great would 



lA review of lliis opinion will be found in The Literary Digest for March 27, 1915. 

'Ambassador Gerard confirmed the story in his book "My Four Years in Germany," New 
York, 1917. 

The Hearst papers, with their "twenty milhon readers," were the most unreasoning op- 
ponents of the President. 

'Robinson and West, 256. An address made in New York twenty days before had contained 
the same expression. 



176 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

have been the risk of going to war in the spring of 1915. 
Hence he maintained his poise. He wrote a series of notes 
during the months of May and June in which he made solemn 
protest that the destruction of human hves by Germany was 
quite a different thing from the destruction of property by 
England; he threatened war in the event that ruthless sub- 
marine attacks continued to endanger life upon the sea. He 
never for a moment yielded to the German contention that 
America must first compel Britain to remedy the wrongs of 
the blockade before she corrected the evils of the submarine.^ 

A discouraging fact to those who believe in democratic 
government was the violent attack upon the President be- 
cause of his "weasel-worded" notes from the very papers 
whose editors had been denouncing him because he did not 
break the British blockade. And these men and papers turned 
now to constant criticism because the Administration did not 
go to war with Mexico at the very moment when Germany 
was intriguing to that end. People who exerted large in- 
fluence seemed to think that a great and burdensome struggle 
with the poor Mexicans, at the moment when the European 
war was about to spread to American shores, ought to be 
glibly undertaken. Wilson kept out of war, he insisted upon 
the strictest neutrality throughout the years 1915 and 1916. 
But everybody felt that war might come any day; none felt it 
more keenly than the President. 

Thus the task of reforming the abuses and tyrannies of 
great industrial corporations, the most important work that 
could be done by an American statesman, was to be halted by 
the German Emperor. The election of 1916 would turn, then, 
not upon the merits of the work that the President and his 



'Robinson and West gire the texts of the President's notes. The German notes will be 
found in "American Diplomatic Correspondence on the European War," No. 2, a government 
document, 1917. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 177 

colleagues had done, but upon the narrow margins of the 
European game of war diplomacy; or, what was the same 
thing, upon the use that American politicians might make of 
the European crisis. Truly, it often happens that merit does 
not influence the course of history or the success of a 
leader. Wilson was fully alive to the difficulty of his 
situation; every prominent politician of the two factions of 
the old Republican party was likewise "keen" to make use of 
new weapons.^ 

The leaders of the conservative wing of the Republican 
party quickly joined Colonel Roosevelt in his reiterated 
demands for the adoption of universal military service by the 
United States. General Wood of the United States army, 
representing the aggressively Prussian group in the service, 
canvassed the larger universities of the North in the winter 
and spring of 1915 urging universal military service in 
general and the adoption of military training schools in the 
colleges in particular. This was done without the approval 
or consent of the President or the War Department.^ Not 
only the colleges but business organizations were canvassed. 
Speeches were made that took on the form of semi-official 
warnings. Leading newspapers took up the propaganda. 
American defence and security leagues were formed. Rear- 
Admiral Peary made speeches in Chicago in which he de- 
clared that within twelve months German flying machines 
would be dropping bombs upon the business district. 

Not only the larger business and the more conservative 
groups of the North took up this new Americanism, as 
Roosevelt called it; the Progressive party dallied with it out of 
loyalty to their leader of 1912. If a part of the Democratic 

•Any examination of the files of newspapers and periodicals for the twelve months preceding 
the assembling of the conventions of 1916 will show this beyond a peradventure. 
'Converaation of the author with the proper authorities in August, 1915. 



]78 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

party could be induced to follow the same lead, the President 
would be compelled to adopt the very programme which 
Bismarck had employed in the building of imperialist Ger- 
many. Senator George E. Chamberlain of Oregon, a Demo- 
crat, accepted the new militarism. He was chairman of the 
Senate Military Committee. Secretary Garrison of the 
Cabinet likewise became a convert to the Roosevelt- Wood 
gospel. Preparedness became the order of the day and men 
talked freely of the adoption of military conscription by an 
Anglo-Saxon community. Yet the critical state of the 
world forbade even the mentioning of the enemy against 
whom the agitation was aimed. 

Secretary Garrison prepared his report for the year 1915 as 
though he spoke for the country. It was a preparedness 
document, the introduction to which might have given just 
cause for offence to the President, if Wilson had been of a 
sensitive and punctilious nature. The report was followed 
by definite plans which were submitted to Congress very 
promptly. The Regular Army was to be increased to 142,000 
men. A new "continental army" of 400,000 was to be 
organized as soon as possible. There were to be reserves of 
state militia and vast quantities of war material. In similar 
manner the navy was to be enlarged.^ This was indeed a 
remarkable change from the older British-American attitude 
on the subject of armaments. Men seemed not to consider 
the danger in a country like the United States of such a great 
number of armed men. They were apparently frightened by 
Germany; or probably they felt that the unstable conditions 
of the industrial region rendered such a force necessary to the 
security of great properties. Much depended upon the atti- 
tude of the President, for Congress was very loth to accept 
either Secretary Garrison's recommendations or to become 



'"American Yearbook," 1910, S-5, 16-18. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 179 

excited by the representations of the National Security 
League. 

The message of December, 1915, gave tentative support to 
the Garrison mihtary plans. In January, Wilson toured the 
North calling attention to the need of a greater army. In 
St. Louis he declared that America must have the greatest 
navy in the world. From the speeches German sym- 
pathizers might think that the great army was to be employed 
against the Fatherland, and British supporters might with 
equal justice feel that the great navy was to be employed to 
break the blockade. Of course the President could not make 
addresses that would practically break down the neutrality so 
carefully maintained.^ It was noticeable, moreover, that he 
never employed the term "universal military service" and he 
was careful to explain that there was to be no militarism in 
the country. 

The result of the journey seems to have been a conviction 
that it was best not to hasten the larger preparations which 
the Secretary of War and Senator Chamberlain demanded. 
Representative Hay of the House Military Committee pre- 
pared a bill which would employ the national guard as the 
proposed new army, and it was in other respects a much mild- 
er reform of the old military system. Hay found strong 
support in Mr. Bryan, then opposed to the Garrison plans, in 
Representative Kitchin, and Southern members of Congress in 
general. Wilson did not lend support to his Secretary of 
War and the latter resigned.^ Immediately all the elements 
of the opposition centred about the retiring secretary, pro- 
claiming him an injured public servant. A month later when 
Newton D. Baker, an opponent of war, was appointed to the 
vacant post, there was much sharp criticism. It seemed that 



^The Literary Digest, February 5, 1916, gives an account of the President's rampaign. 
'"American Yearbook," 1916, pp. 16-18, gives a slightly coloured account of the episode. 



180 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Wilson had come very near to making a serious blunder and 
had recovered at the last moment. Whatever the leaders of 
the opposition urged upon him in this matter of universal 
military service, it was noticeable that the Republicans in 
Congress and in their conventions which met in Chicago in 
June following declined to take the advanced stand they 
commended to the President.^ A national defence act was 
passed during the summer. It was a compromise, but it 
added nevertheless very greatly to the military power of the 
country. And significantly it gave the President great powers 
over the railroads in the event of war; it also authorized a 
council of national defence. In like manner Secretary Daniels 
was authorized to hasten the building of twice the number 
of capital ships that had been provided in former years. 

The European war had changed the military policy of the 
country. Representative Kitchin declared that the United 
States was becoming a militaristic nation. Wilson was of the 
opinion that public opinion, such as Mr. Kitchin and very 
many other representatives in both houses expressed, needed 
to be aroused. In August, 1915, he had become convinced 
that he would be unable to keep out of the great war. Of 
course this feeling could not be made public. Only the 
closest observer noticed that in the Public Defence Act and in 
the Adamson Law there were definite grants of military 
powers to the President that could be explained upon no 
other ground than his apprehension of the future. 

But in all that had been said and done no opportunity 
was given for a sharp party issue. Only in the Adamson Act, 
that came after the presidential campaign was well advanced, 
and in the general treatment of the civil service from the be- 
ginning was there distinct challenge to the opposition. As be- 

'" American Yearbook," 1916, pp. 80-31, give* a succinct suntnary of the Progressive and 
Republican platforms. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 181 

tween Labour and Capital, Wilson took the side of Labour, as 
any other president must have done or pretended to do. The 
question of the civil service was a difficult one.^ Wilson did 
not handle it well. He had long been an advocate of civil 
service reform. But the Republican party had been in of- 
fice sixteen years. All the positions, with the exception of a 
considerable number which had been filled under the civil 
service commission, were held by Republicans. Men, like 
Mr. Bryan, in the Cabinet and in Congress wished to find 
places for "good Democrats." A similar spirit had char- 
acterized all other administrations.^ Wilson, although fully 
aware of the risks, allowed many diplomatic, consular, and 
other positions to be awarded to party workers. And 
Democratic leaders in Congress more than once enacted 
legislation that tended to debauch the civil service. The 
President himself removed Director North from the man- 
agement of the Census Bureau and placed an inexperienced 
man in the position thus made vacant. 

A great outcry was made against the policy of Mr. Bryan 
and a good deal of criticism was directed against Southern 
members of Congress for seeking to control the patronage of 
the Government. As to the President's removal of the 
Director of the Census, a cursory study of the record of Mr. 
North reveals a sufficient public motive for an apparently 
partisan act. When all has been said that can be said, it re- 
mains clear that Wilson did not take a backward step in 
this important matter. He does not love the patronage of 
his office. Senators have said to him : "You must recognize 
that somebody must build up the party. Why not let us 



'"American Yearbook," 1916, pp. 184-86. 

'Preiident Roosevelt's letters, written while he was in office to the English historian, George 
Otto Trevelyan, recite a similar difficulty and confess a similar policy. — Scrihntr's Magazine, 
October. 1919, p. 391. 



182 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

devise ways and means since you will not do it? " One of the 
diflSculties between the President and his party in both 
houses of Congress throughout the period following 1913 was 
just the problem of the patronage. And as the matter stood 
when the campaign of 1916 opened, the Administration had 
as good a record as any of its predecessors; one is constrained 
to say a better one. 

Thus the great war had shifted the issue from domestic 
concerns, but Wilson had managed not to commit himself 
publicly to the likelihood of American participation. He had 
seized the leadership of the movement for preparedness which 
had been started by opponents, and prevented his party from 
being pressed too far in the direction of militarism. And in 
the minor concern of the civil service, on which no election 
was apt to turn, his record was not particularly vulnerable. 
Public opinion was, however, greatly perturbed. The Presi- 
dent was greatly perplexed. Public men did not know how 
to shape their courses, upon the very eve of the assembling 
of the national conventions.^ 

It was a unique situation. The Democrats, both the body 
of the party in the South and its fairly certain allies in the 
Western states, were proud of their leader. They had not 
had such a spokesman since Andrew Jackson. They must 
renominate him. But the masters of the party organizations 
in New York, Indiana, and in Illinois hated Wilson, The 
more successful he was, the more disastrous appeared the 
future for them. There were absolutely no side doors to 
them to the White House so long as Wilson was in power. 
These men controlled, as always, the great delegations in 
Democratic conventions. They agreed to allow Wilson to 
have a renomination, for the simple reason that there was 



1 Despite the confident language of leaders like ('olonel Roosevelt, it was evident that neitlier 
Eepublitans mir I'rogressivi-s knew what to dii. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 183 

nothing else to do. Before the end of the year 1915, Wilson 
had no possible competitor for the nomination. Mr. Bryan, 
who had felt compelled to leave the Cabinet, was a loyal 
supporter of the President even when the latter sought a 
second term. The convention which met in St. Louis on 
June 4th was simply a formality, a ratification meeting for all 
the work of the Administration. It declared that Wilson had 
compelled Germany to respect American rights and yet he had 
not "orphaned a single child." "He kept us out of war" 
was the common talk of the convention. It was soon to be 
the slogan of the campaign.^ 

Although President Wilson himself was the greatest asset 
of the Democratic party, the long list of reforms effected, the 
tariff, finances, trusts, income tax, and the new foreign policy 
were rehearsed in the platform put out by the St. Louis con- 
vention. And more. The child-labour bill then before Con- 
gress, the principles of the Progressives of 1912, and a moder- 
ate preparedness programme W'cre embodied in resolutions 
which gave promise as to what the party would do in the 
future if continued in power. The Republicans were sharply 
criticized for their continued opposition to the Shipping Bill 
so long before Congress; the cause of w^oman suffrage was rec- 
ommended to the states for adoption; and, finally, the various 
alien groups in the country were warned against the double 
allegiance urged by the German propagandists .^ 

The country received the Administration platform as it 
received the work of the Wilson Administration, as distinctly 
progressive if not radical. The movement inaugurated in 
1912 by La Follette and launched with so much enthusiasm 
by Colonel Roosevelt was now practically obsolete. Many 
of the Progressives had already indicated their satisfaction. 



'TAe Literary Digett, June 23 and July 1, 1916, gives an account of the Democratic convention. 
'A summary will be found in the "American Yearbook," for 1916, 35-3(5. 



184 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Colonel Roosevelt and his closer friends could not, of course, 
recognize ungrudgingly the sweeping character of the reforms 
of Wilson. The logic of events compelled the political Pro- 
gressives to turn again to the Republican party. The Eu- 
ropean situation also drove them in the same direction. Yet 
many of the leaders of 1912 were either pro-German in sym- 
pathy or afraid to oflFend the German voters in the cities of 
the North. Senator La FoUette was now an open supporter 
of the German cause. On the other hand. Colonel Roosevelt 
and his Metropolitan Magazine group were the most violently 
anti-German of all American leaders. 

The Congressional election of 1914 had already shown 
that the Progressives were a vanishing party, like that which 
ex-President Van Buren had led in 1848. Less than two 
million people voted with the party which had given Roosevelt 
four million votes in 1912. It was plain that many if not 
most of the Progressives had been simply Roosevelt men and 
not reformers. This was best shown in states like Pennsyl- 
vania which had given very large votes to him in 1912 and 
almost none to Progressive candidates for Congress. In 
the West there was a genuine radicalism, led by Victor Mur- 
dock and William Allen White of Kansas. 

The return of the party to its ancient friends was distinctly 
foreshadowed in September, 1915, when Colonel Roosevelt ac- 
cepted a semi-public dinner from Judge Gary and his friends 
of the high financial circle of New York. Mr. George W. 
Perkins had a part in this return to "safe and sane " moorings. 
He was to the Progressive movement what George Harvey 
had tried to be to the Democratic party. Only Perkins was 
successful. The Gary dinner gave men the "hunch" and 
one by one the Eastern Progressives indicated their return. 
They were promptly received, if not as promptly forgiven. 
The Progressives called a conference to meet in Chicago 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 185 

January 11, 1916. It was tliere decided that the next na- 
tional convention of the party should be held in Chicago on 
June 7th, and that an eflFort should be made to induce the Re- 
publicans, who had already appointed their convention to 
meet at the same time and place, to nominate Roosevelt. 

This the Taft men in the older party could not permit. 
They hoped to nominate ex-Senator Root. Of course the 
Western Progressives could never be induced to vote for the 
man who had managed the so-called "steam roller" in the 
Republican convention in 1912. Roosevelt showed his es- 
sential conservatism in the proposition to nominate Senator 
Lodge, a close friend of Root. The Progressives would have 
no other than Roosevelt. The apparent deadlock continued 
till the very closing day of the dual conventions in Chicago. 
Another man was necessary. Justice Hughes, a conserva- 
tive of non-committal record in the stormy days of 1912, 
proved to be a God-send to the men who were managing 
things for two opposing groups of the old Republican party. 
Hughes refused to answer all requests for his views or his 
attitude toward a possible nomination of both conventions. 
His silence lent him strength. His character lent the proposed 
combination dignity. His former honest and able exposure 
of the venal and criminal connections of big business, the 
great insurance companies, and the machine elements of both 
the Democratic and the Republican parties gave promise of a 
good national administration, if not of continued reform. 
Of even greater significance was the silence of the Justice 
upon all phases of the German war, the Lusitania incident, 
and the submarine frightfulness. The justice was cartooned 
throughout the spring as the sphinx.^ 

'Some people condemned these maneuvers or silences on great matters. But one must not 
overlook the character of the American electorate, both racial and sectional. It has never been 
an easy thing to hold a party together or to build a new one in the United States, 



186 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

When the Repubhcans met in Chicago they made out a 
programme that was designed to meet the Progressive point 
of view in minor matters only. They were prompt to declare 
for "honest neutrality and all our rights as neutrals," for 
woman suffrage to be granted by the states, for a return to 
the policy of McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft in what should 
have been called imperial control of the Philippines and for 
the strictest honesty in the administration of the Government. 
Protection to American industry and American labour was 
promised, and the Underwood tariff was denounced. The 
wording of the platform showed how thin was the ice upon 
which the managers of the great reconciliation were compelled 
to skate. It was the language of party platform-making 
since the day of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.^ But 
everybody knew that it was a question of candidates, for all 
the greater parties in 1916, and not a matter of programmes. 

The Republicans in Chicago refused to nominate Roosevelt. 
The Progressives refused to nominate Root, Lodge, or Hughes. 
Two men were offered by the two conventions, Hughes by 
the Republicans, Roosevelt by the Progressives. This hap- 
pened almost at the same moment on June 10th. Adjourn- 
ment was in order. But if these two men were left before 
the people, Wilson's reelection by an overwhelming plurality 
was certain and both wings of the old Republican party would 
practically disappear as effective political organizations. 
Roosevelt now held the fate of the Progressives, as well as of 
the Republicans, in the hollow of his hand. He decided, 
perhaps had long before decided, to make an end of the en- 
thusiastic party that nominated him twice with a zeal de- 
serving of a better fate. He took the proffered nomination 
under advisement. The two bodies adjourned, but the Pro- 

i" American Yearbook," 1916, 30-31. Copies of the various party platforms may be had in 
any good Ubrary. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 187 

gresslves appointed a committee to decide what should be 
done in the event of Roosevelt's declining to make the can- 
vass.^ 

Hughes promptly accepted the Republican nomination. 
He resigned from the Supreme bench in fact to reunite the 
sundered wings of the Republican party; he knew that he was 
the only man in the country who could hope to do that; and 
he at once entered upon a vigorous series of attacks upon 
President Wilson, His "keynote" in the matter of the very 
critical national foreign policy was : "I stand for the firm and 
unflinching maintenance of all the rights of American citizens 
on land and sea." The Germans took that to mean that he 
would enforce American commercial rights as against the 
British blockade, and a distinguished German editor an- 
nounced in his Berlin paper, when the treaty was submitted 
in 1919, that the German cause was lost when Wilson was per- 
mitted to be reelected.^ 

Roosevelt declined after a few days and the Progressives 
accepted Hughes with what grace they could. In general 
the Eastern members of the party seem to have accepted the 
result with satisfaction; many Western Progressives aban- 
doned the Republicans altogether and announced their pur- 
pose to support Wilson. The Republican platform was of 
course accepted by those Progressives who returned to the 
bosom of the older party. The breach of 1912 was healed. 
There were once again two great political parties and two 
candidates that represented, each in his own person, the 
historic sections of the country, Hughes the old North and 



'W. R. Thayer, "Theodore Roosevelt," in the chapter which he calls "Prometheus Bound," 
gives a running account of the twin conventions. The object is, however, to condemn Wilson, 
not to explain Roosevelt. 

2The New Republic, July 9, 1919, quotation from Der Tdgliche Rundschau; also a letter of 
Doctor Albert to Von Papen, November 16, 1916, published by the New York Timts, De- 
cember 19, 1919. 



188 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

industrialism, Wilson the old South and its Western allies.^ 
The critical state of the world made the American election 
of the utmost importance; yet the result in America would 
turn, as in so many former elections, upon the attitude of a 
very few states and a small number of persons in those states. 
What lends particular interest to the thoughtful person is 
the fact that Hughes of all the Republicans most nearly re- 
sembled Wilson in character and even in policy. 

In the hope of putting Wilson on the defensive, the Re- 
pubhcans and the Progressives had held their conventions 
in Chicago before the Democrats held theirs. For the same 
reasons, Mr. Hughes in a midsummer campaign announced 
his loyalty to the good old doctrine of protection; he declared 
he was for America first; he would prepare for possible ills to 
come in the maintenance of the regular army and a Federal 
citizens' reserve; he attacked the President's Mexican policy, 
but did not say what he would do if elected; he seized upon 
the blundering Democratic appointments to office as one of 
the big issues; and he denounced the weakness of Wilson's 
notes to Germany, but refused to say pointedly whether he 
would break the British blockade or go to war with Germany 
about the submarine policy. It was plain to all that Hughes 
could not announce a policy lest he offend the Germans who 
had voted with the Republican party since the days of 
Lincoln.2 

When Mr. Hughes had made a few speeches in the East 
and the Middle West, he turned to the Rocky Mountain 
and the Coast states in the hope of winning the more pro- 
gressive Progressives. But his commitments to the "stand- 



>This is the larger fact but the author does not ignore the large Democratic minorities in the 
North who were so badly represented by machines like those of New York and Chicago. 

»A good digest of the Hughes statements will be found in The lUerary Digest of August 12. 
1010. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 18» 

pat" element of the party, his tariff views, and particularly 
the personnel of the Republican management proved trouble- 
some. On his way West, he continued to attack Wilson's 
civil service record; the farmers of the Dakotas proved rather 
apathetic; but in California the manipulations of the older 
Republican group proved the most serious of blunders. The 
result of the visit was the personal hostility of former Gov- 
ernor Johnson. No Republican candidate ever had a more 
difficult task than that of Mr. Hughes. From start to finish 
he was drawn one way by Roosevelt and his bitterly anti- 
German followers,^ another way by the influential German- 
American politicians, and still a third way by the radical ele- 
ment of the former Progressives whose votes were sought by 
all parties. The outcome was a weak appeal on every vital 
matter that was before the public. 

The necessity of a non-committal policy on foreign matters, 
the danger of continuing the opposition to the Adamson 
Law, begun as soon as the law was enacted, and the weakness 
of the Republican platform on woman suffrage invited men 
to make use of the anti-Southern feelings of the voters in many 
states of the North. As I have said, the Southerners were 
the leaders both in the Cabinet and in the two houses of Con- 
gress. This fact was seized upon and people were told from 
many platforms that the new tariff, the bank reforms, and all 
the other laws that bore adversely upon industry in the North 
were but outcroppings of the old Confederate animus. ^ This 
was particularly emphasized in attacks upon the income tax 
law. The Adamson Law was likewise a Southern measure 
designed to injure the business of the prosperous North. 
The child-labour measure passed in the midst of the campaign, 
a bill that had been urged by Roosevelt and other prominent 

^Thayer's "Theodore Roosevelt," Hi. 

'And the speeches of some Southerners like Mr. Kitchin gave support to the view. 



190 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Republicans since 1907, and resisted by Southern senators, 
was overlooked. 

Wilson and his campaign managers were slow to open the 
struggle. Vance McCormick was his manager; Josephus 
Daniels, a veteran of many party struggles, lent a hand at 
times; and Colonel House, still a new figure in public affairs, 
kept in touch with the Democratic headquarters. Mr. Bryan 
canvassed the Western states for many weeks, thus perform- 
ing a service which Clay had refused for Taylor in 1848 and 
Seward had only grudgingly done for Lincoln in 1860. Francis 
J. Heney of California, Bainbridge Colby of New York, and 
others of the former Progressive party gave public support 
to Wilson. In this team-play of the Democrats and positive 
assistance of leaders who had formerly worked with Roosevelt 
there was evidence of good political ability as well as genuine 
progressiveness in the President. 

Wilson himself remained in Washington till the most im- 
portant items of his legislative programme were safely passed 
or so near passage that there was no risk in his absence. The 
new income tax, the child labour, and the Adamson measures 
were all passed in the period between the assembling of the 
conventions and the first week of September. These meas- 
ures and the resolute attention of the President to their every 
detail, at a time when the foreign situation would have justi- 
fied a less aggressive interest, from older points of view, in- 
dicated the unabating spirit of reform of Wilson the executive 
a well as Wilson the candidate. 

Early in September, Wilson took up his residence at 
Shadow Lawn, New Jersey, whence he sent forth his notifica- 
tion speech. In that document he said: "We have in four 
years come very near to carrying out the platform of the 
Progressive party as well as our own." He declared that 
Labour had been emancipated, rehearsed the long list of 



THE ELECTION OF 191(5 igi* 

economic reforms, and then took up the more delicate matter 
of the American foreign relations. Of his Mexican policy 
he said that he had tried all along to save the country and its 
resources from the grasp of concessionaires and help the na- 
tives to a better life and government. He would not defend 
his notes to the German imperialists, but he pointed out how 
great was the difference between the killing of innocent men 
and women, the German practice, and the seizure of cargoes 
and mail pouches, the British offence. He did not indicate 
that it might be necessary to go to war as soon as the election 
was over, although he must have felt that such would be the 
case no matter who should be elected.' 

It was a curious campaign. The President who had done 
more for the country than any other party leader ever had 
done, unless we except Washington and Lincoln, was attacked 
every day by eminent men and a great political party. 
Neither these men nor their party offered any positive pro- 
gramme. On Wilson's side, although he was conscious of a 
great historical performance, little was said except that the 
President had kept the nation out of war. Indeed the one 
note that seemed to appeal to the voters most effectively, as 
the campaign neared its close, was just that claim that "Wilson 
has kept us out of war." The President surely felt the un- 
worthiness of such an appeal, but he knew that if he inti- 
mated that he would recommend war, he would surely be 
defeated and all his half-finished work might be "scrapped." 

On the other hand, Mr. Hughes was equally timid about in- 
dicating that he would recommend war either with Germany 
or England, although his speech at Louisville as well as some 
assurances he made to a great audience in Philadelphia^ 



^The Literary Digest, September 10, 191G, gives a summary of the address and the press 
comment. 

'New Republic, October 28, inifi. 



192 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

seem to show that he meant to attack the latter country un- 
less American goods were allowed free access to Germany. It 
was a sort of blind-man's buff that both parties played to the 
end. And the voters were compelled to choose as between 
men and parties rather than between avowed programmes 
and promises. But there was a great deal of money spent 
in advertising and in agitation by the opposition. To this 
the Democratic management replied in advertisements that 
called attention to the unprecedented prosperity of the coun- 
try under their beneficent leadership — a stroke of humour 
that must have impressed even partisan Republican minds. 
How long had not their leaders told the world that prosperity 
was a plant of exclusively Republican growth and that demo- 
cratic control meant hard times? 

Whatever the varied and angry groups of foreign-born 
Americans thought, however puzzling the statements of the 
campaign orators may have seemed to the older American 
stocks, the German Government indicated its preference 
late in September by sending the U-boat 53, one of its 
largest undersea boats, to the New England coast to sink 
outgoing shipping under the very eyes of the uneasy East. 
And the German-American Alliance did its utmost to bring 
Wilson to disaster. Their influence had been made manifest 
in the Republican convention. It was continued to the very 
last, in spite of the belligerent speeches of Colonel Roosevelt 
who endeavoured to hold in line all the most violent anti- 
German elements of the national population. The Hearst 
papers likewise cast the weight of their superb sensation- 
alist organization into the Republican side of the scales. 
On the night of the election the Hearst International Film 
Service cartooned the President with indecent malice and 
played up Roosevelt as a hero.^ 

'Witnessed by the writer in Chicago on the night of the election. 



THE ELECTION OF 1916 193 

But when all is said about the confusion of issues and the 
alignment of nationalities, the real opposition to Wilson came 
from the industrial centres, from the former bankers, railroad 
magnates, and the sturdy old Republican stocks of the East 
and the Middle West, men who were afraid of even the moder- 
ate reforms of Southerners and agrarians, from people who 
thought that the Government must ever remain subservient 
to the industrial regions which had so long controlled the 
vital concerns of the Nation. They feared Wilson. Nor 
did the larger labour organizations, despite all that Wilson 
had done for Labour, support the Democratic administration. 
Labour was more afraid of "empty dinner pails," which 
masters of industry threatened, than it was hopeful of good 
things to come from friends actually in power, a state of mind 
which many former elections had shown. 

When the returns came in on the night of November 7th, it 
seemed that Wilson was defeated. Men went to bed think- 
ing that Hughes was to be the next president. But on the 
night after the election it was plain that Wilson had been 
successful. Although the old lines between North and South 
were sharply drawn and the maps of the returns showed the 
two great sections arrayed against each other, Wilson had 
broken over the historic border and won Ohio, New Hamp- 
shire, and California, although he had failed to carry West 
Virginia. It was a combination of South and West which 
had won enough of the industrial centres to give Wilson a 
plurality of nearly six hundred thousand votes. The 
Democratic party had mustered strength enough to carry 
the country, Wilson was vindicated. What could he do 
with his triumph? Elected because "he kept us out of war," 
how could he maintain himself if he prepared at once to enter 
the war? 




194 



CHAPTER X 
THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 

THE reelection of Wilson weakened his power. For, while 
he was serving his first term and looking forward to a second 
nomination, the recalcitrant elements of the Democratic 
party were constrained to support his measures and defend 
his "radical" pronouncements. His reelection released all 
those groups in the party that fed upon the husks of re- 
action and he must seek to fill the vacancies in his own 
party ranks by recruits from the Republican forces. But 
here again his recent success, the almost unprecedented 
plurality of 580,000 votes, frightened the leaders and 
the common-folk alike of the opposition. There was a new 
leader in the country, a second Lincoln, Jackson, or Jefferson; 
and it was every Republican's duty to resist and discredit 
the new man. It would be fatal to the party of industrialism 
if the prestige of Wilson were permitted to rise to higher 
levels. Everything conspired to hamper the President at the 
very moment he was contemplating his change of front with 
reference to the great war.^ 

Nothing shows this better than the treatment of the 
President's bills in Congress in December and January of 
1916-17. He wished the Adamson Law of the preceding 
September completed so that the Government might, in 
the event of war, both prevent strikes and take command 

'There is now and ever has been a deep-set sectionalism in the United States which gives to 
political parties a character distinctly American. 

195 



196 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

of the railroads. Congress refused for a long time to grant 
these logical and wise requests. Labour leaders, includ- 
ing Mr. Gompers, made violent protests against his propos- 
als.^ Acting upon the patent evidence of the recent elec- 
tion, Wilson urged a corrupt practices act which might have 
remedied the ills of the over-use of money in national cam- 
paigns. Although it was plainly in the interest of the 
Democratic party that such a bill should become law the 
leaders of that party did not endeavour to force the reform 
through Congress. They were then in majority on safe 
margins. Once again the President pressed the Senate to 
ratify the treaty with Colombia, negotiated three years 
before, whereby the people of the United States were to make 
honourable amends to those of Colombia for the seizure of 
Panama by President Roosevelt in 1903.- Although the 
Democrats sustained their leader fairly well in this, the 
Senate refused for a third time to accept the President's work. 
It was, however, the constitutional provision that treaties 
must be ratified by two thirds of the Senate which caused 
his defeat in this highly important item of his international 
policy. 

General Wood, supported by practically all the army 
influence in Washington, by the Roosevelt and the Taft 
Republicans in the East, by the National Security and 
the National Defence leagues, and especially by the larger 
city newspapers, urged every day upon the Government the 
adoption of the universal military service scheme which the 
President had declined to accept a year before on the urgent 
advice of Secretary Garrison. Now the Senate Mihtary 
Committee headed by Mr. Chamberlain, Democrat and in- 



1" American Yearbook," 1917, p. S. 

*The Flood report of 1912 upon the so-called Panama revolution makes unpleasant reaii. 
ing for any fair-minded American. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 197 

fluential leader of the party in the far Northwest, held hear- 
ings in February, 1917, introduced a military service measure 
which was contrary to the views of both the Secretary of War 
and the President. It was a plan to which all the greater 
industrial leaders of the country and the reactionary elements 
of the East were contributing the utmost of their influence 
and power. Everything that could be done to overbear 
Wilson and his followers was done and with the aid of a 
considerable number of his own party. 

What gave a sharper point to the sectional reminis- 
cences of the last campaign was a statement of Represen- 
tative Kitchin of North Carolina to a group of recalci- 
trant Southerners, when the emergency revenue bill was 
discussed in the Democratic caucus, that the North would 
have to pay the cost of the preparedness for which New 
York cried so loud. He meant that the income tax would 
fall upon the wealthy industrial states more heavily than 
upon the agrarian states of the South, which was a true 
statement and which represented a just policy. Yet in the 
temper of the times a great outcry was made against Wilson 
and his so-called sectional party. Kitchin was cartooned as 
a master "pork" politician draining the enterprising industries 
of the North of their resources in order to benefit the South. ^ 

It looked as if Congress were getting away from the Presi- 
dent. The time had come for Wilson to relent a little in his 
career of reforming business, for if he meant to go to war with 
Germany, as it was plain that he must do, the industrial 
leadership of the whole country would need to be conciliated. 
His bank reform, the Adamson Law, and most of the other 
measures of his first four years in office had b.een aimed at re- 
dressing the wrongs of the agrarian and labour elements of the 

^Tlie Liierary Digest of February 10, 1917, gives the cartoons and the press comment from 

varioui sections of the North. 



198 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

nation. He had defeated the earher preparedness move- 
ments in which the industrial states had been interested; he 
meant to defeat, on the eve of war, the Chamberlain- Wood- 
Roosevelt military bill.^ Was there anything he could do for 
"business"? Could Wilson do anything which "business" 
would consider as honestly intended in its favour? 

His one crumb of satisfaction was offered in the so-called 
Webb Law which he now made an Administration measure. 
In February, 1915, in an address before the United States 
Chamber of Commerce, he proposed to the industrial groups 
of the country a scheme^ somewhat like the former German 
cartel system. He said: "There are governments which, 
as you know, distinctly encourage the formation of great com- 
binations in each particular field of commerce in order to 
maintain selling agencies and to extend long credits, and to 
use and maintain the machinery which is necessary for the 
extension of business; and American merchants feel that they 
are at a very considerable disadvantage in contending against 
that. I want to be shown this : how such a combination can 
be made and conducted in a way which will not close it 
against the use of everybody who wants to use it. ... I 
w^ant to know how these cooperative methods can be 
adopted for the benefit of everybody and I say frankly 
if I can be shown that, I am for them." 

Wilson felt that there was an element of national selfish- 
ness in the urgent demands of business men for the immediate 
expansion of American trade in foreign lands in the midst of a 
war such as that then waging in Europe. He said that he did 
not like to take advantage of the war to win from England and 



'This bill was designed to set up a permanent conscription policy at a time when excitement 
and the actual needs of a war, soon to begin, would seem to justify it. Wilson would resort to 
conscription only for the immediate emergency. The others wished conscription as a perma- 
nent policy. 

'G. M. Harper, "President Wilson's Addresses," 143-45. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 199 

France their markets in the great world. Every day busi- 
ness men and their newspaper spokesmen were declaring 
that the British navy alone protected them against the ag- 
gressions of Germany; they were demanding universal mili- 
tary service in the United States as a means of protection 
against possible invasions. Yet they were organizing banks 
in South America and China in order to facilitate the com- 
mercial capture of those markets, in which England had 
such a vital interest. And already American business in 
those lands had doubled and trebled during the war.^ Must 
the people and the Government of the United States, in 
such a crisis, engage in an attempt still further to win and 
finally control commerce in fields where America's friends 
would inevitably lose? 

At the very time the President was making the Webb 
bill an Administration measure, a foreign trade conven- 
tion, under the leadership of Alba H. Johnson, president of 
the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and James A. Farrell, 
president of the United States Steel Corporation, was dis- 
cussing at Pittsburg the urgent need of a more aggressive 
foreign trade policy and asking Congress to pass the Webb 
bill.^ The President was indeed treading close to dangerous 
ground. Perhaps he hoped to allay some of the bitter feeling 
against him and to win to his war programme some of the 
support of business men. 

The Webb bill became a law, however, only after much 
prodding on his part and against the votes of a good many 
senators who doubted the meaning of Greek gifts, and who, 
therefore, delayed the passage of the measure until April, 
1918. The chief feature of this concession to "business" 



i"An]eri('nn Yearbook," 1917, p. 509. 

2 The Literary Digenl, February 10, 1917. At the same lime George Harvey was attacking 
the President for his supineness in such matters in his North American Review. 



200 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

was the right of exporters to combiue for purposes of foreign 
trade and to pool their expenses and profits; but the Federal 
Trade Board was to have legal supervision of all such com- 
binations. It was not long before the Supreme Court passed 
favourably upon the law and business men began operations 
under it in foreign trade. Before the end of the great war, 
the British Government had made similar arrangements in 
favour of English exporters, and it is inevitable that France 
and Italy must do the same thing. That is, the allied govern- 
ments, including the United States, were already adopting one 
of the German commercial devices when the war ended, a 
device which had been one of the causes of the war. 

But Wilson was about to turn from his struggle against 
the over-weening power of American industry and its 
financial allies to a greater struggle with German imperialism 
which was the embodiment of industry, finance, and mili- 
tarism.^ German industrial imperialism, not half so power- 
ful as that of the United States might easily become, had set 
itself the task of subordinating all Europe to its will and 
interests. If Germany won, inevitably American industrial 
civilization must contest with her the supremacy of the 
world. No man who understands the rudiments of his- 
tory could have doubted this in December, 1916. Wilson 
certainly was master of more than the rudiments of history, 
even if all his great interests had been devoted to strictly 
American problems. If, then, Wilson abandoned his 
domestic policy and the so-called national isolation, he 
would only advance to meet industrialism on a world stage. 
It was only a shifting of the struggle from a reform of indus- 
trial abuses at home to a prevention of greater abuses and 



'Of course modern industry is not of itself a great evil. Only tlie seemiug necessity of in- 
duatrial leaders, as formerly with the slavery leaders, to dominate the governmental machinery 
of • country makes industry such a problem in any would-be democratic nation. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 201 

tyrannies of industrial men on a world scale. ^ He knew how 
little he was changing his programme, as anyone may see from 
the phrasing of all his public utterances upon the war in the 
winter of 1917 as well as from the alignment of his enemies 
both in Europe and America from the day that America 
entered the war. Moreover, it was plain from the first that 
industrial and grasping economic leaders of the allied cause 
were almost as much distressed at the tone of Wilson's inter- 
vention on their behalf as they were rejoiced to find the vast 
resources of the United States cast into their side of the 
European scales. The necessities of history make strange 
bedfellows. But the whole world stood in instant need of 
Woodrow W^ilson as the third winter of the great German war 
set in. He and he alone could save mankind from the worst 
tyranny that had threatened it since the days of Philip II 
of Spain. 

Germany was surprised that she had not won the war 
in a few months. Organized as no other people ever had been 
organized, industry, commerce, military, social, and intellect- 
ual departments of her activity all fitting into the general 
political scheme, the German High Command set itself de- 
liberately and in most scientific manner to its great task. 
The Reichstag, despite the former boldness of the socialist 
group, gave all but unanimous support. Even young Karl 
Liebknecht announced to the American ambassador that he 
had confidence in the army and in the cause of the German 
people.^ The press, without exception, gave all the weight 
of its influence to teaching the German people that they were, 
and had ever been, a persecuted race and that now they must 
fight "to the last man" the most gigantic conspiracy of races 



'The President made his appreciation of this evident in his second inaugural. See G. M. 
Harper's "Addre-sses of President Wilson," p. 238. 
'James W. Gerard, "Alj' Four Years in Germany, " p. 215. 



202 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and nations in all history. Teachers in the universities and 
in the schools, and preachers of every creed continued to 
proclaim now, as at the beginning, the unity of the German 
cause with that of Heaven itself. 

The food supply of Germany was long since under the 
control of the first "food dictator" of the great war. The 
financial arrangements of the nation were fixed for a long 
storm ; and amazingly skilful captains of armed cruisers were 
sent upon the seas of the world to harass and destroy the 
commerce of the allied countries. Every railroad in the 
empire, as everywhere else in Europe, was primarily en- 
gaged in war work. The standing army grew enormously 
till it was reckoned at ten to twelve million fighters. W^oraen 
turned more earnestly than hitherto to the heavier toil of 
men in order that the ranks of the army might never lack for 
human material. The greatest of all arms manufacturing 
plants, the Krupp works at Essen, increased its operations 
many fold, while in Austria and elsewhere other similar 
works put out the greatest guns ever known to warfare. 
The Berlin and the Chemnitz industrial districts were quickly 
converted into munitions-making districts. If Germany 
did not bring the world to her feet, it would not be for the 
lack of scientific organization and herculean effort. 

Germany was at the outset the richest of all the con- 
tinental nations. Her annual income amounted to nine or 
ten billions; that of England was not much greater, while 
that of France was very much less. She meant to devote 
the whole of her wealth to the struggle already begun. There 
was no hesitation about publishing to the world the extent 
of her ambitions. Friedrich Naumann put forth his "Mit- 
teleuropa," a book which outlined the German plans. The 
world accepted Naumann as an inspired spokesman of the 
national purpose. Austria, Hungary, and the possible con- 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 203 





FRANCE /!.. "x ^^\l < V 




The Proposed Pan-German Empire 

quests from Russia were to be united with Germany. The 
Balkan states and Turkey were to be economic dependencies, 
and a wide colonial empire was to be set up in Mesopotamia. 
It was to be a great middle Europe that would hold the world 
in due awe and reverence. Naumann's book sold by the 
hundreds of thousands and its author became an important 
national character.^ 

An intense national and apparently official propaganda 
looking to the detachment of France from the triple entente 
was set in motion. France was the noble nation, ein ehrlicher 
Feind, who must be satisfied. Alsace-Lorraine was to be 
returned and there was to be no more mistaken hectoring of 



'Translated into English by C. M. Meredith; published in London In the summer of 1918. 



204 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

her government or jealousy of her growing colonial empire.' 
But Great Britain could never be forgiven. Lissauer's 
famous Hassengesang was sung all over the Fatherland and 
its author was called to court and decorated with the order 
of the Red Eagle of the second class. A book was written 
and published under the name of "Hindenburg's March 
Upon London" in which the hated enemy was described 
as broken and brought to the feet of the Kaiser. It was 
said that four millions of copies of this work were rapidly 
absorbed in Germany.- A million copies of a translation of 
this book were quickly taken in England. Bookstores in 
New York and Chicago sold thousands of copies of the same 
translation.^ 

Aware of the fell purposes of imperial Germany, even be- 
fore the evidence of her amazing military efficiency was made 
known, British statesmen took the lead in the counsels of the 
allies. They could not get an eflFective army in the field be- 
fore 1916. They might use their navy, they could lend 
vast sums of money, and they felt compelled to promise re- 
arrangements of the boundaries of Europe. If France would 
only hold the Germans back one more year, France might 
have the long-coveted Rhine boundary and of course Alsace- 
Lorraine. Italy, offended at the aggressive purposes of 
Austria in the Balkans, was promised the Trentino, Trieste, 
and perhaps the control of the Dalmatian coast if she would 
join the triple entente. Russia was to have Constantinople 

•Many Americans received pamphlets from Germany in 1915 that took that tone and at 
the same time made England the great sinner, while the Bagdad corridor became the one thing 
(or which Germany fought. 

'Both Naumann's "Mitteleuropa" and the "Hindenbm-g March Upon London" were 
written during the 1915 campaigns against Russia when successful resistances to the German 
arms seemed impossible. 

•Any people that would quickly absorb four million copies of "Hindenburg's March Upon 
London" must be strangely possessed. In England and America the book was used as propa. 
ganda to stir men to retitt GermMiy. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 205 

and her warm water harbours, longed for since the time of 
Peter the Great. Venizelos, the prime minister of Greece, 
was asked to support the alhes, and the Greeks, too, were to 
receive "compensations" at the peace.' 

One must not condemn off-hand to-day these bartering 
arrangements of European statesmen. Nor may one assume 
that the peoples concerned would have been greatly shocked 
if they had known all that was going on. The peoples of 
Europe, pressed one by another into narrow limits, are 
now and have long been filled with an intense land hunger 
of which Americans have little actual knowledge. France 
wished a wider area; Italy hungers for every possible inch 
of new soil; Russia, with plenty of land, has been kept from 
the seas and world markets for two centuries; and Greece 
is starving for the want of land for her teeming population. 
Europeans fight for tangible objects. ^ Thus England bar- 
gained for the support and the cooperation she must have, 
or Hindenburg's imaginary march upon London would prove 
a reality. 

Leaving France and England to perfect their arrangements 
and to win the support of the Italian army, von Hindenburg, 
the hero of the great Tannenberg battle of August 26 — Sep- 
tember 1, 1914, gathered the immense strength of Germany 
along the Russian front, which extended from the Baltic to the 
northwestern corner of Roumania. Russia was supposed to 
have twice as many men as Germany could employ against her. 
The Russian Grand Duke Nicholas commanded the Russian 
right, fronting von Hindenburg in East Prussia; the Russian 
left was commanded by General Alexei Brusiloff, perhaps the 
greatest of all the Russians engaged in the war. Brusiloff 

'These are the concessions of the treaties of London published by the Russian Soviet Govern« 
ment in November, 1917. 

•The United States hungered for Cuba for nearly a century, and Mexico failed only ntrrowij 
of annexation in 1S47-S. 



208 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

began first. Tarnopol, Lemberg, and, finally (March, 1915) 
Przemysl, with hundreds of thousands of Austrian prisoners, 
fell into his hands. He crossed the Carpathian Mountains 
and began the invasion of Hungary. It looked as if Austria- 
Hungary would be broken away from Germany. But von 
Hindenburg began in midwinter, even in the dreary East 
Prussia, his attacks upon the Grand Duke. On February 12th 
the Russians were disastrously defeated, and two hundred and 
fifty thousand men fell victims to the superior strategy of the 
Germans. Then von Mackensen struck at Brusiloff's rear, 
drove in his strong outposts, and compelled a retreat across 
the Carpathians and down the slopes of Galicia till all that 
had been gained was lost and a large part of West Russia 
and Volhynia, with their stores of minerals and foodstuffs, be- 
came supply ground for the Germans. At the same time 
von Hindenburg continued his "drive" into Russian Po- 
land, Courland, and Lithuania. The richest industrial and 
railway districts of Russia were in German hands before the 
end of the summer, and more than a million Russian soldiers 
had been killed. Another million were prisoners worldng 
upon German farms or in German munitions plants, thus 
helping the cause of their enemies.^ 

To stay the tide of German victory, the English and the 
French made strong attacks upon the German lines in Bel- 
gium and northern France. Terrible conflicts ensued but 
only small "dents " were made in those well-nigh impregnable 
positions. The Italians made ready to strike against their 
"hereditary" enemy, the Austrians, in midsummer, but the 
debacle of the Russians in Galicia left them at the mercy of a 
large Austrian army. The Italian advance was quickly con- 
verted in to a defence. Everywhere the German military ma- 

'The horrors of this campaign across Poland equal if they do not surpass anything known 
to modern or ancient warfare. There can be no doubt that the German High Command meant 
to terrorize the world. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 207 

chine mowed down allied armies and overran allied territory. 
When the Bulgarians saw how the tide was likely to turn, 
they cast in their lot with the great General Staff in Berlin 
and opened their railroads to German armies and German 
supplies, the latter being hastened to the aid of the Turks 
now growing panicky at the prospects of the British Dar- 
danelles expedition. A German general conducted the 
Turkish operations against the British, while von Mackensen 
himself directed in the early autumn a vast attack upon little 
Serbia, the Bulgarians delighting to aid their German allies 
in the cruel work which followed. The Greeks who were 
bound by treaty to aid tiie Serbians, fearing the terrific 
power of the Germans, did not send a man. The King of 
Greece, a brother-in-law of the Kaiser, now took the lead in 
public affairs, refusing the services both of Venizelos and his 
parliamentary majority. Autocracy was the order of the 
day. It was time to put aside the clumsy and ramshackle 
thing called democracy everywhere. Had not Germany 
shown the world the better way, the way of efficiency? In 
the language of Victor Hugo, describing Napoleon I, The 
Great General Staff in Berlin was about to embarrass God, 
so omnipotent had it become. 

England failed disastrously in her efforts to open the 
Golden Horn to Russian exports, so much needed in the 
allied world; and of course French and British military sup- 
plies could not find their way to the myriad hands of Russian 
soldiers now aroused to the awful dangers of war for them. 
The Dardanelles effort cost England many capital ships and 
a hundred thousand devoted soldiers. As the British with- 
drew from their dangerous position on the coasts of Galli- 
poli, the Germans drove the remnants of the Serbians over 
the mountains of Albania. British and Italian ships took 
these broken people to Corfu, while Britain and France to- 



208 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

gether maintained with difficulty a single position in the 
region, at Salonika. Such was the end of all the brilliant ex- 
pectations of the early spring of 1915. The allies were every- 
where defeated, save upon the ocean.' 

And as I have already indicated, the Germans were making 
the sea more than dangerous to any one who might follow his 
lawful business upon it. A half-dozen American ships had 
been sunk and many American lives had been lost. The 
lALsitania was sunk just as von Hindenburg was moving 
into Russia and Brusiloff was beginning his retreat across 
the Carpathians. France changed her ministry; Great 
Britain was confronted with an Irish rebellion and the people 
of the United States, divided and provincial as they had al- 
ways been, were hardly awake to the state of the world. It is 
no wonder that Germany was drunk upon victory. It was 
the beginning of German defeat. Her emperor was now 
confident that nothing could stay the "victorious German 
sword." The General Staff now laid its plans for the utter 
break-up of France and for a final onslaught upon hated 
Albion. There can be no doubt that France literally trembled 
and that England looked upon the popular and clever Lloyd 
George as her only hope. President Wilson, who saw and felt 
all the time that the whole world must reckon with Germany, 
knew that he could not make a positive move nor even 
adequately resent the 'wrongs upon American ships and 
American lives, lest he set loose in his own country the chaos 
of party rivalries and racial conflicts.^ W^ere ever the affairs 
of men in a more critical condition? 

iH. W. De%-inson, "The Dardanelles Campaign," London, 1918, is perhaps the best account 
of this disastrous British effort 

»This view is based upon close study of the American character as well as upon a conver- 
sation with the President in August, 1915. I am convinced that it will be the verdict of 
history when all the evidence is available. See also two French books, "Les £tats-Unis 
(I'Amerique et le Conflit Europeen," Paris, 1919, by A. Viallatc nnd " I.ps fi*at5-Unis ct la 
Gucrrt," Paris. 1919, l.y E. Hovelaque. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 209 

Germany moved forward once more. The Crown Prince 
began the attack upon Verdun on February 21, 1916. He 
expected to drive the French before him and reach Paris 
in the early spring. A new German miUtarist, General von 
Falkenhayn, was the master strategist at the side of the 
Crown Prince. The Kaiser stood upon a safe eminence with 
field glasses in his hand watching for the first signs of dis- 
aster to the French. Day after day the bloody work went 
on; a little ground was won or lost; hundreds of thousands 
of men fell on each side. All the world read the dispatches 
with intense excitement; but Verdun did not fall. 

The English had at last got enough men into Belgium to 
attack. They tried to drive the Germans from the Somme. 
They did not succeed, but they held great armies of Ger- 
mans away from Verdun. General Haig announced that the 
battle of the Somme was a success. The English had held 
the Germans; they had aided the French; and this had given 
courage to the Italians and the Russians who attacked with 
some success on their fronts. The significant fact was that 
British soldiers had learned how to use machine guns, and 
British manufacturers had learned to make munitions and 
tanks, a new weapon in warfare. The more alert of the Ger- 
man people, watching the increasing unity of their foes and 
the growing anger of great elements of the American popula- 
tion, began to fear that their cause might fail after all. 

But it was only a momentary fear. Roumania, whose 
interests were with those of the allies and whose leaders 
were distinctly anti-German, was about to join the allies. 
They thouglit the western powers would finally make the new 
map of Europe, and, if so, they would like to secure that part 
of Himgary which was Roumanian, perhaps more. She had 
an army of five hundred thousand men. Russia still had 
troops enough to assist her. The die was cast. Roumania 



210 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

invaded Hungary in August. Germany replied with an army 
under von Mackensen. It was accustomed to victory; it was 
overwhelming in strength and in great guns. The Rouman- 
ians quickly lost their advantageous positions in the moun- 
tains; the passes were taken by the Germans; and before 
Christmas von Mackensen was in Bucharest. Another en- 
emy had been struck down with lightning-like rapidity. The 
corridor to Bagdad was safer and wider than ever; and still 
other rich food- and oil-bearing lands were at the mercy of the 
General Staff in Berlin, WTio could resist? Would not the 
Allies take notice.'^ It was time for the last great stroke that 
was to bring peace and world empire. Why should not every- 
body agree to Germany's great plan,? 

As a means of winning world approval, the German Govern- 
ment directed its first great peace move toward President Wil- 
son. The President w^as supposed to have committed himself 
irrevocably to peace and even to submission. As a matter 
of fact, Wilson had said in October, 1916, in a campaign speech/ 
that the business of neutrality had played out. He had 
asked Congress and the country to build warships at double 
the rate any former president had built them; he had urged 
three different times the building of merchant ships in great 
numbers ; and he had told an Irish agent of Germany in New 
York that he would feel himself disgraced if he should receive 
the votes of such men. Could wise diplomats in Berlin or 
elsewhere bring themselves to believe that such a man as 
Wilson would not resist the "sink-and-kill" programme that 
the German admiralty was known to be preparing? 

The diplomats about the Kaiser were, like the military 
men, drunk with success; they knew the outside world feared 
them and they thought that Wilson's " too-proud-to-fight" 



'Robinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 356. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 211 

attitude, his patience with them at a time when the condi- 
tions of American poHtics commanded patience, and his 
proclamation about keeping neutral "in spirit," meant that 
he would submit to anything. It was the great blunder of 
Germany that she attributed fear of a craven sort to men 
who merely hated war. It was this that had led to the 
hasty killing of Edith Cavell in 1915, that made a waste of 
northern France, and subjected civilian populations that fell 
into German hands to incomparable hardship. It has ever 
been the weakness and the crime of military men when suc- 
cess crowned their efforts. One can not forget that it was 
General Sherman who said "war is hell, " and then illustrated 
the theory by practice in South Carolina. 

But Germany blindly matured her naval programme and 
sent Wilson the peace message of December 12, 1916. It 
was a "raw" document which announced in spirit and even 
in so many words that the world had seen the German ma- 
chine at work, that conquests were easy to make, that man- 
kind could not escape the German power and the German 
kultur, and that it was time to cease the shedding of innocent 
blood by resisting the German might. If the Allies would 
lay down their arms and gather about a peace table, they 
might then learn what the German terms would be. If Wil- 
son would bring the allied governments to accept this propo- 
sition, he would do mankind a great service. It can hardly 
be thought that Germany believed the Allies would thus sub- 
mit. Yet the proposed submarine weapon was feared. Men 
dreaded the consequences of the test to which the sailors of 
the world were to be subjected. If Englishmen and neutral 
sailors should strike against shipowners, there would be an 
end of the struggle. If Wilson continued his neutral policy, 
the struggle would be lost.^ 

'James V.'. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany," 347-377. 



«12 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

On the 18th of December, Wilson, fully informed by Mr. 
Gerard in person of the undercurrents of Berlin naval 
and diplomatic circles, called upon all parties to the war 
to publish their objects in the waging of such a deadly con- 
flict. He said that all professed the same ends. If so, why 
might not all agree to cease fighting? The German reply 
contained no hint of the terms that would satisfy her, but 
authoritative leaders in Berlin continued to talk of Mittel- 
europa, of retaining Belgium, of vast indemnities to be taken 
from the Allies and even from the United States. The allied 
governments insisted that they could never agree to an 
armistice until Germany gave up Belgium, freed northern 
France, and made reparation for the damage done to those 
who had been overwhelmed by the German armies. It 
was clear enough now that the two groups of powers were not 
fighting for similar ends. It was only diplomatic necessity 
that had caused Wilson to indicate that he might have 
thought otherwise. Nothing came of the German peace ap- 
peal. Nothing resulted from Wilson's request and the 
replies of the warring groups. Germany could not stop. 
The Hohenzollern dynasty had fed the German people sc 
long upon a diet of conquest that the failure of a great war, 
like the one then waging, was equivalent to revolution. Wil- 
liam II, von Hindenburg, von Mackensen, and the rest must 
have great annexations and great indemnities or abdicate. 
The President knew this well enough. Every historian 
realized it. The Prussian ideal had been government by 
force and war as a legitimate business of states since the time 
of Frederick the Great. Forty years had been spent in 
preparation for the moment which seemed just ahead in 
December, 1916. The submarine was to be the weapon 
which would bring peace with annexations and indemnities. 
Once again Wilson endeavoured to bring about peace. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 213 

Dreading, as all democratic leaders must dread, the thrusting 
of their people into war, he addressed the senate on January 
22, 1917: "I would fain believe that! amspeaking forthesilent 
mass of mankind. ... I am proposing that the nations 
should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Mon- 
roe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek 
to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that 
every people should be left free to determine its own polity, 
its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, un- 
afraid, the little along with the great and powerful. . . . 
I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; 
that freedom of the seas which our ancestors have urged; and 
that moderation of armament which makes of armies and 
navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of ag- 
gression or of selfish violence." To attain these ends and to 
set the stage for a new world, he urged: "That it must be a 
peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I 
beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation 
upon it and that it may be understood that no other inter- 
pretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face reali- 
ties and to face them without soft concealments. Victory 
would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms 
imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in 
humiliation. . . . Only a peace between equals can 
last."i 

Here Wilson spoke as a statesman having in mind not only 
the needs of war-stricken Europe, but the various elements 
of his own people who must fight a war upon Germany, in 
the event that he failed to bring the Kaiser to accept the 
Golden Rule diplomacy. It was the President's last call to 
Germany to come again within the pale of modern civilization 



'Robinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 365-370. 



214 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and make a peace that would not ruin her; if she refused, her 
moral position would be worse than ever and American unity 
almost certain. Yet he was not understood. The leading 
men in the East railed at Wilson's " peace-without-victory " 
and once again put obstacles in the way of his going into 
the very war they wished him to enter. They talked of his 
weakness, his pro-Germanism, of his "weasel words," and 
his endless notes. Yet a hundred years from now both 
American historians and the German population will see 
that he put the imperialists on record before mankind as 
unwilling to have any other peace than a peace of violence 
and subjugation. 

Would Wilson go to war? That was asked everywhere 
and every day all over the world. Would Congress sustain 
him with a whole heart if he should go to war with Germany? 
Would the millions of people of German blood, living in all 
the great cities of the North, sustain such a war? These latter 
were questions w^hich some people seemed never to put to 
themselves. 

On January 31st, Ambassador von BernstorfiF handed an 
announcement to the Secretary of State in Washington saying 
that the expected move had been made in Berlin: Germany 
ordered a blockade of England, France, and Italy, closed the 
ports of Europe to neutrals as well as belligerents, and hence- 
forth submarines would sink all ships that endeavoured to 
trade with any of the countries at war with Germany. One 
American ship, duly painted according to German orders, 
might go to England each week, and a narrow lane through 
the Mediterranean to Greece, still a neutral country, was 
marked off for the sailing of an occasional ship! The world 
was simply told to stand aside while Germany finished her 
job. Secretary Zimmermann, of the German Foreign Office, 
said to Ambassador Gerard on January 31, 1917: "Give us 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 215 

only two months of this kind of warfare and we shall end 
the war and make peace within three months."^ Napo- 
leon I never issued a more autocratic order. Wilson 
was asked, just as Belgium had been asked on August 1, 
1914, to hold the gun aimed at England, while the Ger- 
mans pulled the trigger. For the United States to submit 
would have been as immoral as it would have been for Bel- 
gium to grant willing consent to the German army in 
1914. As I have said before, the Berlin authorities were 
drunk with what they called their own greatness. It was the 
one thing needful to the final overthrow of the Hohenzollern 
dynasty and the complete breakdown of the German system 
as taught and worshipped since 1864. Although Germans 
at home and Germans in the United States had said again 
and again that the United States were hardly equal, as a 
fighting power, to Roumania, the resources and the vast in- 
dustrial machine which Wilson would command, in the event 
of war, were equal to the resources and the economic power 
of all Europe. Almost gleefully von Tirpitz and the Gen- 
eral Staff took their chance and challenged Wilson to do his 
worst. 

Wilson replied on February 3rd in the sudden and irrevocable 
breaking off of relations with Germany. From the Congress 
which had refused to pass a shipping bill, refused to enact his 
corrupt practices measure, and had for six months failed to 
pass the most vital and necessary parts of the Adamson 
compromise of the preceding August, he now asked a blanket 
grant of power to meet the urgent needs of the new situa- 
tion .^ The country, however, was at last ready. Germany 
had revealed herself in ways that the wayfaring man could 
understand. W^estern and Southern newspapers that had 

'James W. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany," 875. 
»F. A. Ogg, "National Progress," 394. 



216 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

formerly been unequal to an understanding of the issue in 
Europe talked with hearty endorsement of the imminence of 
American participation in the war against Germany. The 
reactionary East that denounced Wilson because he would 
not compel England to open her blockade on behalf of Ameri- 
can goods bound to Germany shouted approval. Even large 
elements of the German-American population indicated 
sorrowfully that the Fatherland was no longer defensible. 
It was remarkable how the dis-United States rallied to the 
President. Wilson felt once more the tremendous weight of 
the national approval. 

While America came to his support in unquestioned man- 
ner, Europe began to realize that something might happen 
on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Gerard says that Betli- 
raann-HoUweg feared the consequences of the ruthless sub- 
marine policy; but Germany as a whole still lived in her il- 
lusions of supreme power on earth. The English press 
that had jeered and cartooned Wilson for his request of De- 
cember 18th, and his "peace-without-victory" address,' now 
saw some wisdom in Wilson's method. The French, who 
derided in extravagant language the strange "Monroeism" 
of the speech to the Senate, sought in a few short weeks to 
give their pens an entirely different turn. Europe really 
took notice of Wilson in February, 1917. His "folly " might, 
after all, interest elder statesmen. 

It was not a light matter. The German submarine be- 
gan to take an enormous toll upon the shipping from which 
Britain, France, and Italy must live. Day by day the 
published list of sinkings became more ominous. Belliger- 
ents and neutrals alike went down. Millions of tons of food- 
stuffs and ammunition were destroyed with the utmost 



^The Literary Digest for February 10, 1917, gives the comment of the foreign press upon the 
Pr«>ideat'8 diplomacy. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 217 

abandon by the Germans. Although the beginning of the 
great aUied offensive in the Somme region, which came in 
March, 1917, brought an immediate retreat of the German 
army over a wide strip of territory to a so-called Hindenburg 
line, the events upon the ocean a little later on the very 
coasts of the United States warned Wilson that if he would 
save the cause represented by Britain and France, he must 
hurry. It was not long before a million tons of shipping 
was sunk each month. 

But Wilson was making ready his strokes. The secretaries 
of war and navy had been consulting business men with the 
view to having matured plans ready in case of war as early as 
the middle of December, 1916. Wilson entered into relations 
with these men, later called the "seven dictators." Daniel 
Willard of the railway world, Julius Rosenwald, of the Sears 
Roebuck Company, Samuel Gompers, head of the American 
Federation of Labour, and others prepared the measures that 
were later to be adopted so promptly.^ But Congress was 
not ready. It was a body chosen in 1914 and a little out of 
touch with its constituencies. 

The President's urgent request for far-reaching powers, 
granted in the house bill of March 1st, giving him authority 
to arm American merchantmen, was held up in the Senate 
and defeated in a notorious filibuster. The men who managed 
this filibuster illustrate the curious character of American 
public men as well as the kind of opposition that was still 
manifested to the entrance of the United States into the great 
war. The leaders of the group were Stone of the Missouri 
Democratic machine; O'Gorman the Irishman of Tammany 
Hall connections; Clapp of Minnesota, and La Follette of 
Wisconsin. The Germans of Missouri, the Irish of New York, 



'Investigation of the Graham committee as reported in the daily papers of July 7, 1910. 
The Chicago Tribune gives a brief account of the investigation. 



218 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and the German-Swedish elements of the Northwest were the 
motor forces behind these "wilful men," as Wilson charac- 
terized them. In Germany, the Frankfurter Zeitung char- 
acterized Stone as a great patriot trying to save his country 
against the unconstitutional conduct of the president; while 
the Berlin Local- Anzeiger denounced Wilson as the most 
"dishonourable man who ever stood at the head of a great 
state." ^ 

Thwarted in his efforts to get from Congress the powers 
he needed and denounced by Germans abroad and in the 
country in the bitterest of terms, Wilson took the oath of 
office for his second terra on March 4, 1917. In his first in- 
augural he had summoned all forward-looking men to aid him 
in the healing of American industrial life. Now he said, 
showing how well he understood America's relation to the 
world war: " There are many things to do at home, 
and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve; but we 
realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must 
be done with the whole world for stage and in cooperation 
with the wide and universal forces of mankind, and we are 
making our spirits ready for those things. They will follow 
in the immediate wake of the war itself and will set civiliza- 
tion up again. We are provincials no longer. "- 

It was indeed an anxious time. A new epoch for the 
United States was beginning. But it may well be doubted 
whether the American representative system enabled the 
country to have at the President's side more than a handful 
of senators and representatives who were half aware of what 
went on about them that famous day. Congress adjourned 
in an ill humour, filibustering to defeat not only the bill grant- 



TAe Literary Digest, March 17, 1017, gives the names of the Senate filibusters and tiie 
excerpts from German papers. 
'G. M. Harper, "President Wilson's Addresses." 238. 



THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 219 

ing powers that the President thought necessary to the ful- 
filment of his duty, but a number of important appropriation 
measures urgently needed in the ordinary operations of the 
Government.^ Both the bitterly partisan Republicans and 
the provincial and machine-ridden Democrats of that closing 
session of the Sixty-fourth Congress advertised to the people 
their utter lack of understanding of world affairs. Their 
last acts lent strength and a better frame of mind by contrast 
to the next assembling Congress which was promptly con- 
vened. 

At a joint session of the Sixty-fifth Congress, on April 2nd, 
Wilson read his message recommending a declaration of war 
on Germany. At the same time he sent the German am- 
bassador guarantee of safe-conduct from the country. Wil- 
son spoke as a man of long-suffering patience, driven to war 
by a ruthless group of autocratic rulers in Berlin. It was to 
be a war to "make the world safe for democracy." He 
closed the address with a paraphrase of Martin Luther's fa- 
mous appeal to Charles V at the Diet of Worms : "I can not 
do otherwise, God help me." The people, almost without ex- 
ception, approved his words and his course. Both the Senate 
and the House voted on April 6th by large majorities, and 
without prolonged debate, for a declaration of war. It was 
seen to be a race between the German submarines and the 
American preparations. If Wilson and the country did 
their utmost Germany might yet be defeated; if any serious 
blundering occurred, America would fail and France would 
be dismembered. It was indeed a new day and great issues 
depended, as often before, upon the words and conduct of 
one man. 



'Two years later, in equally critical times, three senators conducted a similar filibuster. 



CHAPTER XI 
"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 

A DEMOCRATIC people never makes war with any great 
show of efficiency. The United States^ has conducted its 
wars with apparently a maximum of waste and blundering. 
The Mexican War was probably an exception to this rule; 
but in the War of 1812, the Civil War and the struggle with 
Spain, it is difficult to imagine more of blundering and cross 
purposes without complete failure. In 1917, the nation em- 
barked upon the most gigantic, if not the most important, 
of its wars under the leadership of a man who did not believe 
in wars as a method of solving international problems and a 
Secretary of War who was an avowed pacifist. Moreover, 
the political party that must conduct the struggle was the 
party of plain country folk, of men and women who were 
not connected with the great industrial concerns and in- 
terests that lie at the bottom of wars. Everything augured 
against an efficient and successful conduct of the war of 1917. 
Yet the opposite of everything expected happened. No other 
war in which the country has ever engaged was marked with 
as little of scandal or as much of success and efficiency. The 
cause of this unexpected turn of events was mainly the leader- 
ship of the President. 

The way was cleared for the first strokes of the War 



'The author does not mean to assert that the United States is a democracy. It is, alJ things 
coiuidered, probably as nearly a democracy as Great Britain. 

220 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 221 

Congress, the Sixty-fifth, on April 2, 1917. The new body 
organized promptly, the Democrats holding their own with- 
out difficulty in the Senate while in the House the Republi- 
cans were so nearly a majority that it was onty with the 
help of three Independents and a Socialist that the Demo- 
crats could elect the Speaker and retain control of the great 
committees. This was a good thing from the standpoint of 
efficient leadership from the White House. It compelled 
the party in power to remain at its task and pay close at- 
tention to Mr. Wilson for whom there was little love in either 
house. The Speaker, Champ Clark, was notoriously out of 
harmony with his chief; Representative Kitchin, the chair- 
man of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Repre- 
sentative Dent, chairman of the Military Committee of the 
House, were inclined to disagree with the President, the latter 
going so far as to refuse at the critical moment to in- 
troduce the Administration Military Bill. Nor were all 
Senate Democrats in a better frame of mind. Under ordi- 
nary circumstances and ordinary leadership, this state 
of things would have meant a return to the old govern- 
mental impotence. It did not prove to be an ordinary 
occasion.^ 



And Wilson's leadership proved at once the most ex- 
traordinary. When he read his now famous war message 
practically the whole people applauded. The work of prep- 
aration had been completed. Men knew at last that impe- 
rial Germany could not be permitted to go her way unhin- 
dered into Paris and to a world control; they were ready to 
fight that this should not come to pass. This popular read- 
iness Wilson turned, as only he knew how to turn it, into a 
campaign for democracy. His phrase, "The world must be 



' " The American Yearbook," 1917, p. 9, and of course "The Congressional Record," pcuriv^ 
give accounts of this. 



222 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

made safe for democracy," expressed the common thought. 
Its emphasis by the President was tantamount to a return of 
men's thoughts to the older and better ideals of 1776. 

But of course the ominous dangers in the world situation, 
the distressing dispatches telling of the ruthless sinking of 
ships by German submarines, with the slightly encouraging 
stories of von Hindenburg's retreat on the Somme, bore upon 
members of Congress and nerved their hands to a unanimity 
that was unnatural in the existing state of party strength and 
party fears. As soon as the committees could get into their 
places, Secretary Baker submitted a plan of universal military 
conscription that took the former militarists off their feet. 
But Congress promptly passed the measure, and before three 
months had passed the Government, assisted by an enthu- 
siastic public support and actual assistance in every town and 
county, had enrolled the young manhood of a hundred mil- 
lions of people, was setting up vast training camps, and en- 
gaging hundreds of thousands of carpenters and plumbers to 
build and equip suitable barracks. Railroad companies and 
business corporations everywhere yielded first place to the 
needs of the country. It was amazing to witness, that sum- 
mer, the efforts of a democratic people getting ready for war. 
Great Britain, stimulated by the quick march of Germany 
through Belgium in 1914, did not prepare so rapidly or so well 
as did the United States under the leadership of Wilson and 
the spur of the public will in 1917. 

Wilson next called for a law authorizing a censorship of 
press and free speech. He might have followed the example 
of Lincoln in 1861-2 and suppressed newspapers and im- 
prisoned individuals without process of law. He preferred 
to have Congress and the country formally authorize him in 
such drastic moves. Congress did not quickly follow him in 
this and he, using the prestige of his popularity, set up about 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 223 

the middle of April a bureau of public information which 
was responsible to him. At the head of this bureau he placed 
a radical Democrat and experienced newspaper man, Mr. 
George Creel, who had fought many a battle for free speech. 
In a very short time this bureau gathered into its offices 
a score of excellent men who worked faithfully to the end of 
the war, endeavouring not so much to censor and issue orders 
to public speakers and writers as to persuade and lead them 
to publish only such information as would assist the Govern- 
ment in its efforts to bring Germany to her knees. It was 
leadership and not coercion that made this work so successful 
in spite of the constant jealousy of certain members of Con- 
gress and the inveterate enmity of certain great newspaper 
corporations. Information was sent daily to the press; 
agents were sent out to explain the causes of the war to cer- 
tain elements of the German and Irish population; documents 
were spread broadcast over the country ; representatives were 
commissioned to all the allied nations to explain the efforts of 
the United States and stimulate the enthusiasm of peoples 
worn out with the long and disastrous war; and propaganda 
was sent over the lines into Germany. When the history of 
the war is finally written the work of the Creel bureau will 
have an honourable place in the record. / 

But as the war went on Congress became impressed 
with the facts of the case. The various and intricate ways 
in which German representatives, still in the country, and 
Americans with strong Germanophile sympathies control- 
led important industries were brought out by the Federal 
and War Trade boards. Congress was convinced of the 
necessity for action, even in a field so difficult as that of 
rigid control of public speech and public print. The Es- 
pionage Act was passed on June 17, 1917, and amended upon 
recommendation of the Department of Justice in May, 1918, 



224 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

so as to confer practically unlimited powers upon the Govern- 
ment. Under the increasing stimulant of war, the Judiciary 
Committee of the Senate was ready to go much further 
during the autumn and winter of 1918-19 to protect the 
country against what was called bolshevism.^ 

Under the cover of these laws and supported by an over- 
whelming pubhc opinion, men were imprisoned for speaking 
too freely, and for giving aid to the enemy; severe penalties 
of narrow-minded courts-martial were enforced; and some 
periodicals were temporarily suppressed. Conscientious 
objectors to miUtary service of any kind proved to be one of 
the special difficulties. A great outcry was made, particu- 
larly about the treatment of Eugene V. Debs, whose attitute 
was perverse and serious in its effects, and about the cruelties 
of certain military prison camps. It is certain that the 
Constitution was violated in many of the clauses of the vari- 
ous laws on the subject of free speech; and the spirit of the 
older American ideals was ignored from start to finish. It 
must not be forgotten, however, that it is the duty of Congress 
to wage war when that becomes necessary. The history of 
the United States from the first year of the Revolution to the 
close of the Philippine War offers frequent evidence of 
more drastic punishments and more widespread violations 
of the ideal of American institutions than even the most ir- 
reconcilable critic of Mr. Wilson can cite against him. With- 
out formal law to support him President Lincoln seized 
thousands of suspected men and thrust them into prison 
where they remained months and years without charges be- 
ing preferred against them. He proclaimed martial law in 
districts where there was no war, and he suspended the writ 
of habeas corpus upon his own authority. He suspended im- 
portant newspapers indefinitely and placed armed men at 

'Liberals are generally agreed that it went too far. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 225 

election places to control the vote of the civil population.^ 
Lincoln is the great political saint of the country and he 
deserves the honour that history has awarded him, 

Wilson did not choose to do any of the things I have 
mentioned upon his own volition. He secured from Congress 
the enactment of laws to cover his acts. To the end of 
the war with Germany he insisted upon mild punishments 
and refrained, I believe, from ordering anybody before a fir- 
ing squad. To be sure the United States was far from the 
scene of conflict, as a distinguished historian has observed,^ 
and there was less public anxiety. Yet the stress of war was 
very great in the spring and summer of 1918, and plain coun- 
try folk who composed the body of the Wilson support 
thought there were millions of Germans in the country who 
would defeat the allied cause if possible. 

In the early days of the war Wilson issued an earnest appeal 
to the farmers of the country to put forth their utmost efforts 
to overcome the food shortage of the world. And there was, 
in fact, a shortage of cereals and provisions in the United 
States. Moreover, there was, as we have seen, a growing 
shortage of labour on the farms. To overcome the diflSculty 
which might easily have become a decisive factor in the strug- 
gle, he called Herbert C. Hoover, who had won the love of the 
whole liberal world as manager of the Belgian Relief, to or- 
ganize a food-conservation movement. Congress expressed 
doubts about allowing Mr. Hoover the powers which his 
proposed oflSce would require. The President insisted, in 
accordance with his established view, that one man and only 
one man should be given the decisive voice in the problem 

»J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States," IV. 164-66. The fact that slave sUtes like 
Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland furnished votes in Congress to sustain Lincoln's policies 
is significant. 

^Professor William A. Dunning in the American Historical Review, July, 1919, makes an ad- 
mirable comparison of Wilson and Lincoln in this respect. 



226 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

of food conservation. Congress yielded after some delay 
and the Hoover "dictatorship" was quickly set up. Higher 
and guaranteed prices to farmers for certain staple products 
were announced by the Food Administration or voted by Con- 
gress. Experts were engaged to deal with the Chicago pack- 
ers, with exporters of grain, and with farmers' organizations. 
Posters were sent all over the country advertising what people 
should eat and what they should drink; agents were sent out 
to teach men and women how to preserve fruits and vegeta- 
bles. Efforts were made to prevent the enormous wastage 
of food in the greater cities. 

It was in the main a campaign of voluntary effort. Men 
and women worked for a dollar a year with Mr. Hoover; 
people saved food, planted war gardens, and otherwise lent 
aid to the Government in hundreds of ways. But Congress 
gave the full support of law to the greater operations of the 
Food Administration, while the President by executive order 
aided in the regulation and control of millers, the purchase of 
government supplies, and the export of foodstuffs to Europe. 
As the United States became early in 1918 the only available 
source of supply for the feeding of millions of men and animals 
fighting on the western front, and the whole mass of these 
supplies was under the control of the Food Administration, 
the President, acting through Mr. Hoover, became a dictator 
of world affairs unprecedented in history. It was, though, a 
dictatorship that could not continue a moment after the close 
of the war. 

In all that was done by the Food Administration the De- 
partment of Agriculture lent enthusiastic assistance. There 
were state, county, and town agents of the Department where- 
ever there was a chance for effective assistance or where 
farmers needed advice and stimulus. All the varied in- 
dustries that furnished farms with implements, or fruit-grow- 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 227 

ers with cans or other suppHes, were taken in control either by 
the Food Administration or the Department of Agriculture. 
Ill organized as the United States was, under the pressure 
of Wilson's leadership and the spur of a constantly growing 
appreciation of the meaning of the great war, Germany her- 
self was given lessons in national cooperation and energy. 

The cost of such a war as that of 1917 was a problem of the 
utmost importance, the more in a country where every priv- 
ate soldier must receive pay equal to that of officers on the 
continent of Europe and where young men in the training 
camps must have something of the comforts amd amusements 
to which they had been accustomed at home. To meet this 
cost, which soon amounted to a billion a month, Wilson had 
unconsciously made preparation in the income-tax system 
that had been fairly elaborated bef®re the war came upon 
the United States. Secretary McAdoo worked out the 
arrangements which the President approved. The first 
grant of Congress was for three and a quarter billions of dol- 
lars; a second grant was made in October, 1917, of more than 
seven and a half billions. Thus the nation continued in- 
creasing its appropriations to the cause till somewhat more 
than thirty billions was actually spent or loaned to the allied 
governments before the return of the President from the 
Peace Conference in June, 1919.^ 

How these enormous and unprecedented sums of money 
were spent will not be known, in detail, until a formal history 
of the war is published. But in the building of camps for 
soldiers, the purchase of supplies, the commandeering of rail- 
roads and ships, the manufacture of guns, aircraft, and am- 
munition of every kind, great sums were expended. The 
loans to the allied governments amounted to ten billions. 
Billions were spent upon the building of new ships, war and 

"Estimate of.Secretary Glass published on July i), 1919. Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1919. 



228 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

commercial, upon ship-building plants, and upon houses for 
carpenters who worked for the Government at scores of 
places. 

To meet these expenditures, taxes were laid upon ordinary 
incomes, business corporations, and excess profits at rates 
that yielded as high as five or six billions a year when the war 
drew to a close. Some men paid several millions a year taxes 
to the Federal Treasury ; thousands of men paid each a hun- 
dred thousand a year. States like New York, Massachusetts, 
and Illinois each turned into the National Treasury a sum of 
money that equals the total income of the Government before 
1900. Not only taxes were laid and collected. Loans were 
asked twice a year that ranged from two to six billions. The 
rate of interest was low. But the bonds were over-subscribed 
each time and the takers sometimes numbered twenty million 
different persons. These loans were made for short terms, 
the idea of Wilson and his advisers being that the bonds 
should all be redeemed in a few years by means of heavy 
taxation. 

Although Wilson had not been reared an admirer of 
Thomas Jefferson, he and the men about him in 1917 were 
distinctly of the Jefferson school of leaders. They believed 
that debts, even in a great world war, should not be deferred 
to future generations with long-continued payment of in- 
terest to bond-holders. For a time they insisted that half 
the cost of the war should be paid by taxation. Secretary 
McAdoo was of the same mind. Claude Kitchin, the leader 
of the House, although he was frequently out of harmony 
with the President, insisted upon this point of view. When 
the burdens of the struggle doubled and trebled, it was rec- 
ognized that the payment of a third of the cost of the war 
out of taxes would be as much as could reasonably be ex- 
pected. There was some opposition to such unprecedented 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 229 

war finance; but the wealthy groups of the North and East 
were so generally interested in the outcome that resistance 
amounted to nothing. 

Most other great wars of the United States had been fi- 
nanced by bond issues and paid very slowly out of tariff taxes 
borne by the poor rather than by the wealthy. Some Amer- 
ican wars created vast amounts of bonds, fluid capital, whose 
holders quickly acquired an undue control over the Govern- 
ment itself.^ It was the merit of the Wilson war finance that 
a great volume of the debt was placed among people of small 
means and even among day labourers. Instead of asking 
the willing Federal Reserve banks, with others, to take and 
place the loans, the Treasury Department set up agencies 
of its own to sell the bonds. Although many of the greater 
financial leaders of the country had never forgiven the drastic 
changes of the Federal Reserve system, and although most 
bankers were a little sore at the start, all joined hands and 
worked without charge and in full harmony with the Govern- 
ment. The ready absorption of loans that mounted to six 
billions at one call by a public never before accustomed to take 
government securities is proof enough of the will and the 
spirit of all classes. It was a new day and men took it as 
such. 

As the nation put itself in war array, the President un- 
folded more and more the extraordinary powers of the Amer- 
ican executive. And in a case where the mind of the country 
was so nearly a unit, as much of these powers was due to 
moral suasion and high leadership as to the formal enactments 
of Congress. The farmers rallied to the President; the 
labour organizations of the country, with the exception of the 
so-called I. W. W. groups, agreed not to strike, or in the event 
of strikes to submit to arbitration by the War Labour Board 

'For example, at the eod of the Civil War. 



230 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

of which ex-President Taft and Mr. Frank P. Walsh were joint 
chairmen. Before the end of May, 1917, Daniel Willard, 
president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, summoned, 
on the request of Mr. Wilson, all the railroad presidents of 
the country to Washington where they readily agreed to 
subordinate all individual and railway interests to those of 
the Government. A railroad war board was established. Its 
object was to coordinate the work of transportation and 
management so that the least possible misunderstanding and 
cross purposes should interfere with the efficiency of the 
country at war. 

From the beginning Wilson worked through and with a 
group of business men and members of the Cabinet who stood 
in close touch with the business of war, known since the latter 
part of 1916 as the Council of National Defence. These were 
selected simply for their knowledge of conditions and not 
for political reasons. Some were Republicans, others were 
Democrats. It was not a question of social policy but simply 
one of winning the war as soon as possible. These men 
brought the various interests of industry, agriculture, trans- 
portation, exports, and finance into harmony. There were 
subordinate boards connected with the departments of the 
Government or with the Council of National Defence for 
every important function. Washington became before the end 
of 1918 a vast and busy workshop. Thousands of the well-to- 
do went there and gladly worked without pay ; others, experts 
in the sciences, gathered there to place at tli« disposal of 
the public whatever of knowledge or ingenuity they possessed. 
Wilson said it was a great inspiration to watch the nation at 
war and to receive stimulating support from so many men of 
all walks of life who asked nothing for themselves. "^ 



'An excellent treatment of this whole subject will be found in "The American Yearbook," 
lor 1918, pp. 38-81, by W. F. Willoughby. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 231 

While the forces of society were appHed to the new task, 
Wilson kept his mind then, as ever, upon his main duty, that 
of retaining the ear of the great public and of raising the tone 
of public opinion. Having urged so long the necessity of 
neutrality and talked of the need for Americans to "keep 
their heads," of "peace without victory," and of the "obscure 
causes" of the war, he now sought to stir in the people the 
necessary indignation toward the German authorities. "The 
war was begun by the military masters of Germany. Their 
purpose had long been avowed, expounded in their class- 
rooms and set forth to the world as the goal of German policy. 
Their plan was to throw a belt of German military power 
and political control across the very centre of Europe and 
beyond the Mediterranean into the very heart of Asia. They 
would set German princes upon the thrones of the Balkan 
states, put German oflBcers at the service of Turkey, develop 
plans of sedition and rebellion in Egypt and India, and set 
their fires in Persia. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf 
the net is spread. And now they talk of peace. It has 
come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms 
disclosed. They have many pawns in their hands. They 
still hold a valuable part of France. Their armies press close 
on Russia and overrun Poland. They can not go farther, 
they dare not go back. They wish to close their bargain be- 
fore it is too late. The military masters under whom Ger- 
many is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has 
brought them: if they fall back or are forced back an inch, 
their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. 

"But we are not the enemies of the German people and 
they are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire 
this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it, and 
we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as 
they will some day see it themselves. They are in the grip 



232 ^YOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

of the same sinister power that has stretched its ugly talons 
out and drawn blood from us. If their masters fail, the 
German people will thrust them aside. A government ac- 
countable to the people will be set up in Germany, as has 
been the case in England and France — in all great countries 
of modern times. 

"For us there was but one choice. We have made it, 
and woe be to that man, or that group of men, that seeks 
to stand in our way in this day of high resolution, when 
every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made 
secure for the salvation of the nation. We are ready to 
plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new 
lustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives and 
fortunes the great faith to which we are born, and a new glory 
shall shine in the face of our people."^ 

In spite of all that critics had said of his former attitude 
and were soon to say of the new policy, this was no funda- 
mental change on his part. It is the idealist and the demo- 
crat waging war upon autocracy. Like Burke of old he could 
not find a way to indict a whole people. To him the German 
people was a helpless, deluded race, unconvinced of the great 
wrong it was doing the world. It was the kind of lan- 
guage Lincoln held all through the American Civil War, the 
language of every leader who believes in popular self-govern- 
ment. While Wilson had professed a complete neutrality 
in the earlier years and even implied that all parties to the 
great war were seeking national or class aggrandizement, he 
had never condoned the conduct of the militarists in Berlin. 
Now he would, if possible, bring down upon their heads the 
anger of the German people themselves. It was his opportun- 
ity. Neither the English nor the French leaders could work 

•From a speech made at the Washington Monument, June 14, 1917. in G. M. Harper's 
"Addresses," 459-64. I have condensed and in a few sentences changed the tense. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 233 

thus upon the underpinning of the German system. Once 
again it may well be noted that it was the way of Lincoln 
in dealing with JeflPerson Davis and his immediate surround- 
ing, but I do not mean to compare Davis to the German 
militarists. It took Lincoln four years to win; nor can it be 
said that he weakened the hold of the Confederate leadership 
upon the Southern people. Would Wilson succeed? 

To further Wilson's plans, the French and the English 
missions of May, 1917, visited Washington and the chief 
cities of the country. Foreign Secretary Balfour and General 
Joffre held conferences with the President and the heads of the 
departments of the Government. They showed themselves 
to vast crowds of people and impressed upon the imagination 
of the country the need of instant and substantial assistance. 
They crossed the ocean in the midst of the worst of the sub- 
marine menaces, and men wondered whether they might 
return unharmed or return at all to their beleaguered coun- 
tries. 

It was a summer of solemn disillusionment. The Russian 
Revolution was fully revealed. Americans instinctively re- 
joiced. Another republic, possibly a democracy, was about to 
be set up. Of course the Russian people would continue to 
fight the German war lords. A moderate socialist, Alexander 
Kerensky, was quickly elevated to the leadership of the Rus- 
sian people. He called upon all classes to help him win the 
war. "Then," he added, "we shall have our republic." 
Wilson was moved to send a cordial address in which he 
said: "The position of America in this war is so clearly 
avowed that no man can be excused for mistaking it. . . . 
We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, and the 
undictated development of all peoples. . . . The prin- 
ciple is plain. No people must be forced under sovereignty 
under which it does not wish to live. No territory must 



234 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

change hands except for the purpose of securing for those who 
inhabit it a fair chance of Hfe and hberty. No indemnities 
must be insisted upon except those that constitute payment 
for manifest wrongs done. And then the free peoples of the 
world must draw together in some common covenant, some 
genuine and practical cooperation that will in effect combine 
their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of na- 
tions with one another. The brotherhood of mankind must 
no longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must be given a struc- 
ture of force and reality. . . . For these things we can 
afford to pour out our blood and treasure."^ 

To explain the United States to Russia a commission was 
sent across the Pacific and through Siberia to St. Petersburg, 
It was headed by one of the ablest of all American reaction- 
aries, Elihu Root; but Charles Edward Russell, Socialist, was 
also of the group. A Red Cross mission was later sent, and 
Raymond Robins, a representative of the Roosevelt Repub- 
licans, was placed at its head. Perhaps two score men of all 
shades of opinion composed the two delegations to Russia. 
They carried the best of wishes and the promise of all the as- 
sistance the country could give, if the Russians would con- 
tinue the fight against Germany. This was asking a great 
deal from a people literally broken under the wheels of the 
terrible German war chariot, promising a great deal from a 
country that must from that time forward lend money, ma- 
terials, and men to the powers then fighting under the utmost 
tension on the western front. Kerensky failed, as any other 
leader must have failed. The simple Russian peasantry, 
released from the rigid law of the military system of the old 
regime, simply laid down arms and returned to their homes. 

The United States must, therefore, take the place of Russia 
and send great armies to the western front or see the western 

'Robinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 398-400. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 235 

allies broken. Germany was in her strongest position as 
Russia fell away broken and helpless. Yet she called upon 
the Pope to appeal to the world for a settlement. Benedict 
XV, bitterly hostile to the Italian Government and angered 
at the French for breaking the connection of Catholicism 
with the French Government, called upon Wilson and the 
other representatives of the allied powers to enter into pour- 
parlers for peace upon the basis then existing. It was 
August 1, 1917. Germany was the master everywhere and 
threatening to break with all her power into the plains of 
northeastern Italy. The moment was well chosen. But 
Benedict was not a Hildebrand nor an Innocent III. Wilson 
more nearly resembled the Hildebrands and the Innocents of 
times past. The country of Luther alone paid court to the 
head of the Roman Church. 

Wilson replied toward the end of August in one of his most 
masterly pieces of diplomacy. To accept the invitation of 
the Pope would be to set up Germany as the master of Europe 
and leave the peoples of oppressed regions helpless and in 
worse plight than ever; Germany would reassemble and re- 
organize the powers the war had all but given her; Europe 
would be compelled to maintain a sort of armed truce till 
the next trial of strength. "We can not take the word of 
the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything 
that is to endure. . . . We must await some new evi- 
dence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central 
Powers."^ 

But as Wilson took the lead of the nations in dealing with 
the German offer and outward appearances looked well, 
there was, as we now know," great trepidation in the councils 
of France and England. The British ambassador in Rome 



JRobinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 408-411. 

'The dispatches from Weimar during the closing days of July, 1919, make this very dear. 



236 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

sent a message in the midst of these public declarations that 
approached an overture for peace that would have left 
Germany the mistress of Europe. The western Allies had 
little faith that the United States would be able to send troops 
to the western front more quickly than England had sent 
her great army there in 1916. The task of holding back 
the mighty Teutonic forces seemed greater than France and 
England could perform through the long year of 1917 and 
the early summer of 1918; the task seemed the greater since 
there was now little doubt that Russia would cease to fight 
and release all the German troops from the eastern front and 
allow them to attack France on the Somme. The debacle 
of Brest-Litovsk was already evident. The great militarists 
of Germany were convinced that Europe would be at their 
mercy early in 1918. Wilson alone spoke with confidence. 
He would have no peace with the Kaiser; he regretted that 
the Pope had been willing to come to the aid of autocracy. 
It was bold and warlike counsel indeed for a pacifist; a mili- 
tarist, if we are to judge by the evidence the war has supplied 
us, would have been inclined to make terms. 

The autumn brought a second revolution in Russia. Fin- 
land broke away from the main empire and permitted the 
Germans to prepare there a throne for a Hohenzollern 
puppet; Ukraine, with its grain harvests oflfering every in- 
ducement to the Germans, set up for itself and invited Ger- 
man troops to assist its new government; Siberia and the 
eastern stretches of Asiatic Russia offered a tempting bait to 
the cupidity of Japan. Messrs. Lenine and Trotsky, re- 
turned exiles respectively from Switzerland and the United 
States, now ruled in the heart of Russia, the great region of 
which Moscow is the centre. They had the most difficult of 
all tasks. Wilson sent them a message, too, hoping to keep 
them within the great family of nations that resisted Ger- 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 237 

many. He was conciliatory. Lenine's reply was: "First 
break the power of the capitalists in America, put a score of 
your financial grandees in prison, and we shall be willing to 
treat with you as an ally."^ 

There was no hope in Russia. On the western front 
France wearily held her lines and England struck constantly 
but in vain against her part of the front. Germany was 
surely feared in the United States as she had never been 
feared before. Every day the need of sending an army to 
Europe seemed to increase. From the beginning there had 
been many who insisted upon sending an army of volunteers. 
Wilson resisted this. Colonel Roosevelt, long the staunchest 
advocate of American intervention in the European war, 
went to Washington and offered his services as the leader of a 
division of volunteers which he would raise. It was said that 
three hundred thousand men would respond to his call. 
There was a certain demand from England and France that 
the ex-president should come to their assistance. There 
was a strong public demand and even a stronger political 
wish that Roosevelt be permitted to command an army in 
the trenches. It was claimed that nearly if not all the 
volunteers would be men too old to be drafted into the 
National Army. 

Although Congress gave its consent in the first Army 
Bill that was passed, Wilson doubted the wisdom of sending 
such an army. He preferred to send Major-General John J. 
Pershing, who had commanded the expeditions into Mexico 
and who was held in high esteem in army circles. The ap- 
pointment was admirable : and the President's unfaltering sup- 
port of the general will receive the verdict of history. Pershing 
was a graduate of West Point, a soldier by profession, and a 



'These are almost the identical words, duly translated, that were sent to Washington 



£38 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

young officer whom President Roosevelt had advanced over 
many of his seniors in 1906 to the rank of brigadier. Persh- 
ing arrived with his staff in Paris on June 14, 1917, and 
began preparations for the Regular Army that was to be sent 
in October, 1917. As quickly as possible the Secretary of 
War and the General Staff worked out the plans for the 
American participation in the war. The Regular Army, with 
support from the National Guard, was to make the first fighting 
unit. They took over an American sector in January, 1918. 
In addition there was to be the great National Army that was 
in training during the autumn and winter of 1917-18. 

It was hoped that the United States would be able to send 
hundreds of thousands of aircraft to France and smother the 
German advance of the next spring. Howard Coffin, an 
experienced motor engineer of Detroit and a member of the 
Council of National Defence, w^as placed in charge of the air- 
craft service and given six hundred and fifty milHons of 
dollars with which to hasten construction of the proposed air 
fleet. Engineers were engaged to construct a motor that 
was to be superior to any machine that was then in use. 
After disappointing delays the desired model, the "Liberty," 
was constructed and contracts were let to manufacturers. All 
through the autumn the work of getting ready to make 
motors went on. Of course there were rumours of wilful 
delays and of German spies that disconcerted the public. 
There were from the start delay and wasteful expenditure of 
money and labour.^ 

The Secretary of the Navy was in a better position at the 
beginning of the war for the navy is always ready to mobilize. 
Mr. Daniels had been forehanded also and secured the 
necessary supplies. New and more powerful ships had been 

•The extent and cause of waste and delays were admirably'set forth in a report which former 
Justice Hughes made in ihe spring of 1918 at the President's request. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 239 

building for several years. This programme was now hastened. 
Rear-Admiral Sims, one of the most ardent of the Navy- 
reformers during the last dozen years, was placed in command, 
and a large part of the war fleet hastened to the aid of Eng- 
land. Other commanders were set to guard the coasts and 
harbours of the country. Recruits to the service were 
secured as fast as they could be trained. Contracts for 
submarine chasers were given and hundreds of yachts or 
other ocean-going craft were taken into the national service. 
It was only a short time before Sims was at his post in London, 
dreadnaughts took their places in the North Sea, and destroyers 
roved the Atlantic in search of the enemy. But the great 
public saw the end of the year approaching with only a few 
troops in France and the ocean more infested than ever with 
German submarines. Men asked daily about everything; 
the Government could not give out information that would 
encourage. 

Wilson endeavoured constantly to stir men's emotions and 
hopes. He spoke in October to the American Federation 
of Labour and once more emphasized the democratic char- 
acter of the struggle in so far as the United States was con- 
cerned. He urged labourers to lend their best efforts to the 
building of ships, aircraft, the making of ammunition, and the 
dispatching of railway traffic of every sort. Labour could 
win the war; it might lose the war. But one thing he would 
have everybody understand, there could be no peace by any 
other road than that of urgent warfare. Pacifism could no 
longer be tolerated. There were constant rumours of new 
German peace proposals as the winter approached. He 
forewarned men against all such overtures. It was a fore- 
shadowing of the "force-to-the-uttermost" doctrine that was 
to be preached the next year. 

This conciliatory and nerving address to organized labour 



240 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

was but preliminary to the greater mobilization of all the 
forces of the country that Germany might to be baulked ere it 
was too late. One of the most important items of this en- 
ergetic course of the President was the taking over of the 
railway systems of the country on December 28, 1917. It 
will be remembered that, in May preceding, Wilson brought 
all the railroad presidents into cooperation with the Govern- 
ment. A sort of priority system of forwarding was set up and 
agents of the War Department, cooperating with others from 
the Department of Agriculture, determined what goods 
should have precedence and what roads should yield strategic 
termini to the use of other roads and the public. As the 
Germans continued their frightful way into northern Italy, 
it was seen that no railroad and no private interest must be 
permitted to delay the fullest and quickest activity of the 
Government. 

To improve the transportation system Wilson "took 
charge" of all the great roads and placed Secretary McAdoo 
in personal control.^ It was a bold thing to do. But 
very few quarrelled with the President for it. The tem- 
per of the country was such that anything Wilson thought 
to be necessary to defeat the Germans would have been 
tolerated. The need of quick support to the Allies was the 
one criterion by which things must be judged and performed. 
The President said that it was not because the railroad officials 
had failed; it was to secure unity of action. He asked all 
parties in interest to lend their utmost help, and there can be no 
doubt that both the labour and the capitalist elements quick- 
ened their pace. One thing that was significant for the future 
was the plain intimation of the great railway brotherhoods, 
engineers, firemen, and conductors, about the same time, that 
they would not consent again to become the employes of the 

'This move was duly explained in a messaije to Congress on January 4, 1918. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 241 

private owners of the roads. They were anxious to serve 
the pubhc, but not the capitalists and absentee owners of the 
railways. 

Another thing that caused some thought among the dis- 
interested was the promise of the President to have the 
Government pay the stock- and bond-holders of the railroads 
an income equal to the average of the returns of the roads 
during the preceding three years, that is, at the high rate of 
earnings which the great war had given them. This guar- 
antee of dividends was to continue eighteen months after the 
close of the war. Of course the public must pay all such 
charges. Moreover, the conditions of the time made im- 
mediate increase of wages to a vast army of employes neces- 
sary. The public must also pay this. At the close of the 
war both the high fixed charges and a wage fund of at least 
a billion dollars annually more than had been paid under 
private ownership would have to be met. Thus the war was 
compelling revolutionary social changes. Whatever poli- 
ticians and interested security holders might wish, the 
"scrambled railroads" could never be entirely unscrambled. 
Besides a powerful interest, the bond- and stock-holders 
would inevitably become attached to a system that guar- 
anteed incomes. 

Wilson said in his statement of the case: "I earnestly 
recommend that these guarantees be given by appropriate 
legislation, and given as promptly as circumstances permit. 
I need not point out the essential justice of such guarantees 
and their great influence and significance as elements in the 
present financial and industrial situation of the country!" 

There was indeed nothing else to do. The President did the 
one thing needful; but he laid the foundation for the per- 
manent public ownership of all the great transportation lines 
in the near future. Labour was then intimating as much; 



«42 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

now it will have nothing less than a final and permanent dis- 
missal of the capitalistic element in the problem. When the 
railroads become public property, other great interests will 
inevitably follow the same course. It is not politics; it is not 
what men call dogmatic socialism. It is the way marked 
out by events, from which there is no escape. But while 
domestic events took this significant turn, even more serious 
omens appeared in the international skies. 

In December the German and Austrian governments sent 
representatives to Brest-Litovsk to conclude a peace with 
broken Russia. Germany had agreed to accept the formula 
which the Bolsheviki announced to the world in November, 
1917, namely, that there were to be no annexations and no 
indemnities in any peace which Russia should make. Con- 
fronted, however, with unarmed men, the Germans exacted a 
peace that dismembered Russia and also huge contribu- 
tions of gold. While this bold announcement of the German 
policy was making, a vast army of Germans and Austrians 
fell upon Italy, drove General Cadorna from the Julian Alps, 
and crossed one Italian river after another until German guns 
threatened Venice and the rich industrial region of the North. 
The fall of Italy seemed imminent at Christmas, 1917. If 
the Italian resistance were broken, nothing could prevent 
Germany from organizing all that historic northern country 
that lies between Venice and Milan. From Piedmont, the 
German generals would then descend upon southern France, 
and make useless all those defences on the Somme front 
which had so long withstood all attack. In Paris, in London, 
and in Washington the worst was daily feared. Moreover, 
the use which Germany was able to make of the new social 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 243 

gospel which came out of Russia was very threatening. Not 
only the Italian soldiers, but the war-worn Frenchmen 
hearkened to the so-called "new freedom." Mutinies were 
threatened in the French armies. Ill news came upon 
every wind. From the Far East came veiled threats that, 
after all that had been done in Europe, the war might yet 
be lost if Japan did not receive her price. 

When the great war opened Japan quickly showed a dis- 
position to make the utmost use of the world crisis for her own 
advantage. Great Britain held vast possessions in the Far 
East; France was mistress of an empire to the south of 
China; and the Dutch held rich islands in the Pacific. Japa- 
nese statesmen declared that the civilization of the West 
was about to fall and that the time had come for Japan to 
realize her world mission. The very language of Prussia and 
her Junkers was daily reproduced in the papers of Tokio. 
Count Okuma, whether in office or out of office, voiced the 
ambitions of the Japanese imperialists. To any one who read 
the news of the Far East in 1915-17, it was clear enough 
that Britain and France must play a very careful role in 
every part of the world, lest Japan oust them from China and 
set up a vast protectorate from Siberia to the Indian Ocean.^ 
In order to prevent Japan from making such use of the 
occasion, England and France promised everything possible. 
It was a case of winning or losing the war with Germany, 
Japan did indeed decide to cast her lot in 1914 with Britain 
and France and drive Germany out of the Shantung peninsula, 
at the same time releasing British ships in the Pacific for 
service in home waters. When, however, this great service 
was done, Japanese statesmen began to threaten China with 
complete subjection; England and Holland with the seizure of 



'Tills view is the result of the study m( many speeches and articles which appeared in the 
Japan Rtvitvc and other publications friendly to Japan. 



844 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Borneo, Java, and Sumatra; and France with the loss of 
Cochin China.^ A ready agreement with Germany might 
easily have been made.^ Before the autumn of 1917 was old 
British leaders urged Wilson to "Keep Japan off of us!" 
When Wilson was summoning all men to join him in making 
a world free and safe for all peoples, the little along with the 
great, a commission was sent to Washington to wring from 
him concessions that were designed to subject China to Japan 
and make of Japan the mistress of the Far East. Nothing 
shows better the spirit with which many men of all countries 
went into the great war than the demands of Baron Ishii upon 
the United States. There was nothing in the East from 
Siberia to the Philippine Islands that the Japanese might not 
have had if they had promptly gone over to the German side. 
Every thoughtful observer feared every day that Japan 
would make this move. England and France asked a great 
deal of Wilson when they said "Keep Japan off of us." Could 
Wilson perform the service? And if so what must be the 
means ? He could grant them concessions in Mexico and equal 
rights in California, but the country would have repudiated the 
grants with the deepest anger. He could leave them a free 
hand or a semi-free hand in China, and le t distraught China pay 
the cost. The people of the country would denounce that, 
but with less of anger than the other. Wilson chose the lesser 
of two evils. He could not exactly refuse to Japan in China 
what England had enjoyed there nearly a hundred years. In 
other words, the economic exploitation of the Shantung penin- 
sula was tacitly accepted in the Ishii-Lansing x\greement of 
1917. It was plainly that or a German victory everywhere. 
One may take one's choice.' 

'A definite campaign for extensive annexations reached this climax in the autumn of 1917. 

•It was reported that an American newspaper correspondent carried the statement of 
Bethmann-Hollweg, that Japan was about to desert En^'land, directly to the Brilisli ForeiK^ 
Office in the autumn of 1917. 

•This is the writer's interpretation of wiiat tran5[)irfd. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 245 

Wilson was hardly through with these negotiations when 
Congress reassembled in December. Many of the members 
were angry at the turn of things. Many were scared, as half 
the world was desperately scared, at the onward march of 
the German legions. Wilson remained perfectly cool. He 
addressed Congress, saying: "Nothing shall turn us from our 
course"; he spoke words of sympathy for the Russian people 
fallen into the hands of an implacable foe; he reassured the 
various subjugated nationalities of eastern Europe.^ 

Once again several of the so-called fourteen points were 
clearly enunciated. Congress gave assent if not approval. 
But neither Congress nor the country really understood what 
was meant by such far-reaching propositions. From the evi- 
dence that became vocal and even shrieking immediately after 
the signing of the armistice with Germany, the articulate 
elements of the country had no thought of supporting the 
President in what he so nobly enunciated in the winter of 
1918. 

Nor did Wilson himself think that business men would 
willingly consent to any Golden-Rule diplomacy at the end of 
the war. He nevertheless moved forward under the impulse 
of a certain weight of approval from the inarticulate masses, 
as well as under the necessity of appealing to the hard-pressed 
masses of Europe who vaguely hoped that Wilson might 
prove to be a sort of Messiah who might save them from the 
hard lot they had suffered for a thousand years. Germans, 
Italians, and Frenchmen looked at that time to the President 
of the United States as the hope of the world. Thus Wilson 
came to the greatest of all his war messages, that in which he 
formulated the fourteen points. It was the climax of Wil- 
son's moral leadership. A great lawyer, accustomed to the 

'The press dispatches of Aueust 6-7, 1919, in all the American paperi reveal the gravity of 
the situation, as he must have known it in 1917. 



246 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

hard realities of big business, declared that Wilson spoke 
"like God Almighty." Col. George Harvey, the too-ardent 
friend of former years, ridiculed the fourteen points as "the 
fourteen commandments." What the western Allies thought 
of this bold undoing of the half-score of secret treaties 
which they had been compelled to make in order to prevent 
Germany from taking possession of Europe has not yet been 
made public. It can hardly be doubted that they were 
displeased. Nor can one think that Wilson himself looked 
the Japanese ambassador boldly in the face so soon after the 
doubtful concessions which Secretary Lansing had been 
brought to make with Baron Ishii. Was Wilson onlysketching 
what he wished to bring men to accept rather than what he 
had any hope of making men do in the eventual peace con- 
ference?^ 

Whatever one may say to this query, the fourteen points 
laid down a magnificent programme of world peace. They 
pointed the way to a new world. There were to be no more 
secret treaties. The water ways of the world were to be " ab- 
solutely " free both in peace and in war. There was to be free 
trade everywhere if this was possible. Warlike instruments 
were not to be manufactured in the future, save in so far as 
necessary for police protection. Old colonial sores were to 
be healed and the dependent races given a new control of 
themselves. These are the points that must have been in- 
tended to apply to all belligerents alike. 

Eight of the remaining pronouncements were to apply to 
Germany and the lands her armies had overrun or to Austria 
and Turkey; Russia must be restored, and Russia would 
supply the "acid test" of the allied pretensions to democracy. 



»The address of January 8, 1918, to both houses of Congress. It may be had from the Gov- 
ernment Printing Office in W.-ishington at any time. 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 247 

Belgium must be evacuated and restored. Devastated 
France must likewise be made good and the wrong of Alsace- 
Lorraine must be righted. Italy should have the "unre- 
deemed" lands in which a majority of the population spoke 
the Italian language. The peoples of Austria-Hungary must 
be given autonomy. All the Balkan states were to be 
restored and set up according to the same principle of na- 
tionality. The Turks were to have what was plainly theirs, 
but they were not to control other peoples or hinder the 
free passage of ships and goods through the Dardanelles. 
And Poland should be made free and independent after the 
hundred and fifty years of semi-slavery which eastern Europe 
had imposed upon it. All these conditions Germany was to 
be compelled to meet before there could be peace or parley 
of any kind. 

Last and greatest in the mind of the President was the 
covenant of "free peoples" for a league of nations that should 
not only prevent future conflicts but serve as a sort of federal 
constitution of the world and guarantee the enforcement of 
the terms outlined above. From the summer of 1915 
Wilson had busied himself with the idea of a world league 
that was to prevent war and tend to bring all mankind into a 
sort of confederation. It was the idea that ex-President 
Taft and the League to Enforce Peace had worked upon 
since the beginning of the great war and even before that 
time. Of course the President, a party leader as well as a 
responsible statesman, could not in so many words adopt the 
Taft idea. He did in fact, however, accept the work done 
and Ihct^ nnciples enunciated. This was one of those links 
that tended to unite the President and the ex-President in 
ways that went far to make the power of the nation 
effective. 

Whatever one may say of the success or failure of Wilson's 



248 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

diplomacy at Paris, the fourteen points remain the greatest 
of all pronouncements ever made by a responsible head of a 
great government upon the ideal terms of a world federation. 
The programmes of Henry IV of France, of Napoleon I, or of 
the mad William II were all put forward for the aggrandize- 
ment of themselves or of their countries. And the various 
popes of the Middle Ages who sought a unity of the world 
under the shepherd of Rome had the grandeur of the Church 
or of themselves in mind. Wilson doubtless felt the personal 
note in his scheme. But he was not asking for anything for 
his country, nor for himself. If he won, if the world per- 
mitted his ideas to become effective, he must indeed become 
one of the greatest of all the leaders of men, but he could 
not profit from this success for he, in a few short years, must 
retire from great affairs. There can be no doubt that Wil- 
son rose to great heights on January 8, 1918; and if anything 
permanent comes of his league, history will ever reckon him 
among the foremost benefactors of men. 

It was not possible that Congress or the leaders of the 
United States, placed historically as Congress and these lead- 
ers were placed, would allow the spokesman of the provincial 
masses of America, the voice of farmers and old-fashioned 
Protestants, to carry forward these great plans uninterrupted. 
It could not be. So great a fame and so great a role for him 
and his country were impossible when weak or selfish men — - 
and who is neither weak nor selfish? — held high position in 
Washington. When Wilson spoke " like God Almighty," and 
when all the world hearkened to his every word or act, he 
was about to sustain an attack that came near to breaking 
his power and disturbing the whole conduct of the war. 
Powerful men, long used to adulation from a vast public, 
viewed this overweening prestige of Wilson, this apparent 
sway of the hated Democratic party, as a great danger to the 



"WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 249 

Republic. Wilson was about to be made the object of the 
greatest and the best-prepared attack that had ever been 
made upon him, or upon any of his predecessors since nearly 
all the famous Republican leaders requested Lincoln to 
withdraw from the Republican ticket in 1864 after he had 
been renominated by an almost unanimous vote.^ How Wil- 
son met and overcame his opponents in the winter of 1918 
is the necessary problem of our next chapter. 

ij. F. Rhodes, "History of the United SUtes," New York. 1906, UI, 517-fiiW. 



CHAPTER XII 
ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 

THE darkest hour of the great war and one of the dark 
hours of modern history was that period which followed the 
great German drive upon Italy in the late autumn of 1917. 
Men reasoned that the German strategists had scored one 
other great advantage and that they would, after all the 
bloodshed of the war and all the huge debts heaped upon all 
nations, march through Italy as Napoleon had done in 1796- 
97 and dictate a peace to a broken world in comparison to 
which Campo Formio was but child's play. That was the 
thought of educated men who worked in Washington or 
gathered upon the street corners of American cities at Christ- 
mas time, 1917. In Washington it was called a blue Christ- 
mas; in Philadelphia and New York the tone was the same, 
but it was tinged with a hatred of President Wilson that 
did not prevail at the capital. This dark hour continued 
almost without interruption till the allied forces broke the 
edge of the German offensive in August, 1918. 

In all of this Wilson maintained an optimistic attitude. 
His idealism, his faith in humanity and in a new world-order 
at the end of the war remained absolutely unchanged. His 
"fourteen points" put out, as I have said, on Jackson day, 
were proof of this. The hard heads of business men, of law- 
yers who win their cases in courts, and of politicians who 
foregather in times of stress, wagged in doubt. The world 
could not be saved by words. Germany was the mistress 

■ioO 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 251 

of Realpolitik, and Realpolitik had held France by the throat 
nearly four years and bowled England over every time she 
attempted to come too near. Was it any time for humane 
and kindly policies? Would the world ever respond to the 
ideals of democracy as set forth in Wilson's beautiful phi- 
losophy? In the midst of adversity, men abandon their faith 
and "curse God himself," as they often do when overwhelmed 
by prosperity. The people of the United States were in a 
mood to abandon Wilson if not to curse God in the winter of 
1918, just as the people of the United States were ready to 
abandon Lincoln in the awful summer of 1864.^ It was the 
time when Sheridan devastated the valley of Virginia to the 
limit of his ability and when Sherman proposed to teach 
Georgia non-combatants the meaning of war. Would Wilson 
abandon his high tone and really set loose the dogs of 
hatred? 

At this hour all the doubting Thomases in the Democratic 
party counted noses and talked of Wilson's autocracy, while 
all the irreconcilable Republicans laid plans to unhorse the 
President. This is a well-considered statement which I am 
sure the records will one day fully sustain. At present the 
deeds of men must be taken as evidence of their purposes. 
Later, their purposes, not now fully revealed in deeds, will be 
known. Nor must one judge too severely. History is a 
strange mistress. The men who saddened the last days of 
Washington's life were the very men whom the nation was 
speedily to honour and still honours without stint. The men 
who demanded the impeachment of Lincoln in private and 
daily assailed him in public were later the honoured leaders of 
the people. One thinks of Chase who was counted a great 
chief justice; of Sumner who was the summation of all that 

'J. F. Rhodes, " History of the United States," cited above. Nor does Rhodes give the whole 
of the dark picture. 



«52 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

New England admired for fifteen years after Lincoln's death; 
and of Thaddeus Stevens who was the soul of the drastic re- 
construction policy of 1866 which was substituted for that of 
Lincoln. I say one must not judge too severely. 

From the day the "wilful eleven" senators blocked some 
of the most important war moves of the President in March, 
1917, Republicans had avowed that there was a truce of 
party politics for the period of the war. Wilson and the 
Democrats accepted the vow. But a distinguished leader 
of Republican opinion said to the writer at the time that it 
was an empty vow, that there was no truce. Empty or 
otherwise, there was a certain effort of people who could not 
actually accept any Democrat as president to refrain from 
denouncing him in the presence of strangers. Strange as it 
may appear, the older, gentler, and well-to-do Republicans of 
the cities of the North could not reconcile themselves to the 
reality that Wilson was the lawful head of the nation.^ Now 
these very best people of the North, in the midst of a great 
war, were compelled to submit to the leadership of Wilson, a 
Democrat and almost a democrat. 

But all through the summer of 1917 there were outcrop- 
pings of public hostility. The Boston Transcript and the 
Chicago Tribune, the latter a hotly pro-German paper in 
1914, derided the President with such remarks as — "We are 
at war but not in it."^ There were flings at the President 
because he had refused to send Colonel Roosevelt to the 
front. And George Creel's Bureau of Public Information, 
as well as Mr. Hoover's Food Administration, was daily 
attacked. The former was a clownish affair; and the latter 
an autocracy in league with the Chicago packers. That was 

•An eminent historian has said that such was the feeling of his neighbours from the begin- 
ning of the Wilson presidency. 

^Quoted from The LiUrary DigMl, May 10, 1917. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 253 

the small talk of the opposition. Of more moment was the 
movement in Congress in July, 1917, to create a committee 
of both houses to assist the President in the conduct of the 
war. Democrats as well as Republicans joined in this effort. 
It was a scheme similar to that which the Republican mem- 
bers of Congress endeavoured to fasten upon Lincoln during 
the Civil War.^ The charges against Lincoln were very similar 
to those constantly urged in Congress against Wilson. When 
the movement gained sufficient headway to attract national 
attention, the President issued a vigorous statement to the 
effect that divided authority was perilous, that he could 
not make use of such an agency of Congress even if it were set 
up, and he pointed convincingly to the attitude of President 
Lincoln. There was no reply. Thus ended the first skirm- 
ish.2 

But Lincoln's situation in 1862 was different from that of 
Wilson in 1917. It was the majority party in Congress 
which endeavoured to set up an extra-legal executive agency 
in 1862, and the majority in Congress corresponded fairly 
with the sentiment of the East. But in 1917 the minority 
in Congress pressed the idea, supported by Democrats who 
felt themselves aggrieved or were otherwise out of harmony 
with Wilson, The minority in Congress, however, in 1917, 
represented the dominant social and economic elements of 
the East, those very kindly and earnest folk who could not 
really feel that any Democrat was rightfully president. This 
made it certain that the abortive attempt of the summer of 
1917 would prove to be only the beginning of a greater cam- 
paign if the war continued and blunders of any sort gave 
any fair grounds for hope of success. It must not be for- 
gotten that Wilson has had to fight for his position almost 

>J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States," IV, 203-205. 

'A fairly good discussion of the subject appeared in The Nation for August t, 1917. 



254 \\OODRO\V WILSON AND HIS WORK 

every week since 1913 in a way that a representative of the 
industrial interests of the country v/ould not have been re- 
quired to fight.^ 

Colonel Roosevelt was sorely disappointed at the refusal 
of the President to allow him to command a great army of 
volunteers in France. And the disappointment was magni- 
fied into a grievance by vast numbers of perfectly devoted 
Americans. Medill McCormick, a representative in Con- 
gress, visited Europe at the time and gave out statements 
to the press that the ministries of France and England were 
constantly wondering why Roosevelt was not sent to France, 
that high military men asked him everywhere why Wilson 
" shelved " General Wood.^ One may be a little surprised that 
any European statesman should allow such statements to stand 
unchallenged. But, as I have already pointed out, European 
statesmen were themselves much disgusted that the Ameri- 
can people should have chosen such a man as Wilson in the 
first place. Nor had the election of 1916 quite shown them 
that Colonel Roosevelt was not the better representative of 
American opinion. 

In the interview between Wilson and Roosevelt of May 
7, 1917, when the plan for a division of volunteers under 
command of Roosevelt was under discussion, Roosevelt said : 
"Wilson raised the question of equipment. I told him what 
he already knew — that the Allies would give me all the equip- 
ment needed from their ample stores. They have the equip- 
ment. They need men. I told him it would be preferable 
to use the English or French rifle, first because they were 
ready and again because to use a different type of rifle and 
ammunit ion would mean to complicate transport problems."^ 

iThis, I think, will be agreed to by all who have observed the course of events with any degree 
of penetration. 

'Washington Post, January 23-24, 1918. 

^iteClure's Magazine for October, 1919, page 26. Roosevelt it reported verbatim. 



ROOSEVELT OR ^VILSON 255 

But Wilson did not allow Roosevelt to go. General Wood, 
who had the reputation of being the best trainer of troops 
in the country, was retained at home, first in one of the great 
camps and then in another. This was regarded by many 
as a studied affront to the general. And the President, as- 
sisted by the Council of National Defence, continued to con- 
duct the war according to his own ideas and perhaps with too 
little consultation of members of both houses of Congress. 
The way was preparing for a contest that would stir the 
country. 

Colonel Roosevelt took the lead. In the Outlook and in the 
Metrojpolitan Magazine he renewed his bitter attacks upon 
Wilson and the Administration. He declared that "we did 
not go to war to make democracy safe." He compared the 
President to the German leaders in that he had talked of a 
peace of equals only a little while before he entered the 
struggle, and because as a "combination of glib sophistry and 
feeble, sham amiability" he could not wish for any but a 
"soft" peace. Roosevelt was bitter in a great deal that he 
said and did even during the "truce." Nor ie it possible 
for the historian to acquit him of personal ends and personal 
disappointments. Even the presidencj^ had had for him 
some of the aspects of private property. And Lincoln he 
could not with patience allow anybody else to quote. It was 
hardly different with the great following that stirred Roose- 
velt to think himself an injured and suffering statesman. It 
was with his followers as it had been seventj-five years before 
with those of Henry CXscy. One dared not criticize the chief 
lest one make a personal enemy of a chance acquaintance. 
And everyone of these devoted folk felt that the country's 
ills would all be cured in a moment if only the strenuous colo- 
nel were in Wilson's place. 

It can not be surprising, then, that Roosevelt opened a 



266 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

general attack upon Wilson in September, 1917; nor must it 
be forgotten that he received hundreds, even thousands, of 
letters almost daily urging him to worse attacks than even 
he was willing to lead. The book "Foes of Our Own House- 
hold," the corrected proof of which he turned over to the 
publishers on September 1st, was intended as a "big-gun" 
attack upon the President and his cabinet, none of whom 
ever received praise from Roosevelt, except Garrison when 
he left office. The worst foe was the President.^ Roosevelt 
forgot that he had said in May that the United States 
should use the guns and ammunition of the Allies both 
because they had an abundance and because such a use of 
material already on the ground would conserve tonnage of 
which there was not half enough. And he also forgot en- 
tirely that it had been Senator Lodge and the other Re- 
publicans in Congress who had defeated the shipping bills 
of 1913-17. He drew upon his wide reading to make the 
Government ridiculous. He compared its chiefs to "three 
women and one goose."^ "We drifted stern foremost into the^ 
war." "As yet we have not a single big field gun at the front; 
we are short of rifles, of tents, of clothing, of everything.'* 
In a newspaper article he said that we were borrowing 
guns from France and England and had shipped 200,000 
coffins to Europe.^ He forgot what he had said in May, 
and he lost sight of the fact that the President could not 
answer him by a plain statement of the facts, lest he, too, 
injure the country. Common men, moreover, did not know 
that the Allies had asked the Government to send men to use 
their supplies and thereby conserve the shipping necessary 
to feed both the allied armies and the civil populations so 

•"Foes of Our Own Household," 76. 

^Ibid., p. 30. All this and endless other such inconsistent and harmful stntements will be 
found in the same book from page 42 to the close. 

'Sworn testimony in the Berger trial in Chicago.— Tfte Tribune, December 27, 1918. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 257 

sorely pressed. They thought that when a man like Roose- 
velt declared that nothing had been done, that no guns were 
put into the hands of American soldiers, and that even cloth- 
ing was not being provided, that their representatives in 
Washington were actually guilty of almost treasonable 
neglect. 

Unable to remain at home longer and content himself 
with such criticism as I have quoted, Roosevelt set out upon 
a tour of the country in furtherance of the political truce of 
the preceding spring. At Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on 
September 30th, he cried aloud that "we did not go to war to 
make democracy safe"; in Detroit he continued the attack; 
in Chicago there was no intimation that the President was 
worthy of the Nation's support; and in New York, on Octo- 
ber 5th, before an immense audience of the "best blood" of 
the city, he denounced the idea of an "easy peace" that the 
President might favour and he urged that Wilson was to be 
compared with the German rulers themselves. ^ The tour 
which occupied the month of September was one rallying 
campaign to all those who hated Wilson from ancient and 
conventional motives, to all who could not understand the 
note of humanity that ran through the President's speeches, 
and of course to those partisans who did not desire to be just. 

The conclusion to many members of Congress was that 
nothing less than a coalition cabinet, with Roosevelt as its 
chief, would meet the situation. It was an extraordinary 
proposition, although the example of the breakdown of the 
Asquith ministry and the substitution of a coalition of all 
parties during the preceding year undoubtedly gave example 
if not precedent for such a proposal. But the plan was not 
for a cabinet representative of Democrats, Republicans, and 
Labour leaders ; it was a plan primarily to put powerful Repub- 

'77i« Nalion for October 25, 1917. 



258 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS Yv^ORK 

lican leaders into responsible positions for the period of the 
war. To understand the proposal one must assume that Mr. 
Bryan or some defeated predecessor of his had set up a claim, 
say during the Spanish War, for the headship of an extra con- 
stitutional cabinet, that he had then gone to Washington in 
person to lead the movement against McKinley while all the 
leading papers of the South coupled the names of Bryan and 
McKinley as the prospective joint authorities in the country. 
It is unthinkable that the Republicans or even the Democrats 
of the North would have countenanced any such movement 
in 1898. And yet the breakdown of the McKinley war or- 
ganization was almost complete. No historian looking on 
in the winter of 1918 could have a doubt as to what Wilson 
would do when the case was presented to him. 

The newspapers of the industrial districts prepared the 
way for the decisive move before Congress met. On Decem- 
ber 12th, Senator Chamberlain, Democrat and chairman of 
the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, proposed a drastic 
investigation of the War Department and its widely heralded 
"shortcomings." Mr. Chamberlain was the senator who 
had collaborated in the autumn of 1915 with Secretary Gar- 
rison on behalf of universal conscription and universal mili- 
tary service. The President, as we already know, refused to 
follow the lead of Chamberlain and Garrison and the latter re- 
signed and was proclaimed a hero by the opposition. Senator 
Hitchcock of Nebraska, who had never been in accord with 
the Wilson Administration, joined Chamberlain. Senator 
Reed of Missouri was then, as he has been since, in bitter 
opposition. He attacked practically everything that was 
done at the White House. The investigation Was quickly, 
almost joyously, voted. ^ Secretary Baker testified before 

'The "American Yearbook" gives a good summary, pp. 3-5; The Literary Digest, Decem- 
ber a, 1917, gives press conimeiit. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 259 

the committee of the Senate on January 10th and 11th. He 
was not free to tell what the agreement with the Allies about 
supplies and shipping was, but he did make a remarkable show- 
ing for what had been done. His conclusion, which is strictly 
historical, was: "No army of similar size in the history of the 
world has ever been raised, equipped, or trained so quickly.^ 
He acknowledged that blunders had been made, that sick- 
ness in the camps had interfered with the work, and suffering 
and death had followed the hasty encampment of more than 
a million young men; but he insisted, and showed ample 
reason for insisting, that the operations of the Nation in its 
great undertaking were going forward admirably and that 
men must exercise patience in their zeal to break the power 
of Germany, else they would aid the enemy in their intem- 
perate haste to see everything and criticize everything. 

Of course the senators were not satisfied. The Republic- 
ans were not satisfied. The industrial section of the country 
could not be satisfied when none of their acknowledged 
spokesmen was in high executive office. It is a pity it is 
true; but it is true. Senator Chamberlain insisted that the 
Government had broken down, a strange statement from a 
leader of the Democratic party, such a statement as only 
some extraordinary state of mind can explain. But he was 
not content with a merely legislative attack. An elaborate 
plan was worked out to stage Chamberlain's opposition to the 
President. The papers reported that an eminent Philadel- 
phia manufacturer, Kern Dodge, was in Washington, between 
the ordering of the investigation and Christmas, urging 
Colonel Roosevelt for Minister of Munitions in a new war 
cabinet that Congress was to create.^ It was claimed that 



'Mrs. Humphry Ward in "Fields of Victory," New York, 1919, in appendix shows that Eng- 
land never at any time had a million men in France. 

'Washington dispatch to the New York Times, December 24th. 



280 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Roosevelt would be the American Lloyd George. Newspaper 
comment was to the effect that Wilson welcomed Roosevelt. 
A front-page article in the Washington Post talked glibly of 
the new arrangement as though it were the most natural 
thing in the world for Congress to set up a second cabinet 
with powers superior to those of the established Cabinet and 
subordinate only to the President. 

The intense depression of the season and the dislike of 
business men for the idealism of the fourteen points, which 
they everywhere interpreted as possibly meaning a near ap- 
proach to world free trade, led to a quick formation of a plan 
to unhorse Wilson. The investigations into the War De- 
partment, although they revealed certain cross-purposes and 
conflicting authority, showed a great work well advanced. 
The errors and confusion were used by the opposition, 
as such things have always been used, to support an ag- 
gressive attack and to make Colonel Roosevelt head of a war 
cabinet. On January 19th, a luncheon w^as arranged in New 
York in honour of Senator Chamberlain and Julius Kahn, 
Republican leader of the group in the House of Representatives 
which had long urged universal military service upon the 
country. Chamberlain, Democrat, and Kahn, Republican, 
gave the movement a bi-partisan appearance that was cal- 
culated to impress the country. At this luncheon Senator 
Chamberlain solemnly declared that " the military establish- 
ment of America has fallen down." It had fallen down 
"because of inefficiency in every bureau and department of 
the Government of the United States." He then added that 
the Senate Military Committee was trying to do something, 
trying to set up a munitions chief who should really save 
the country and the world from disaster. It was a remark- 
able thing for a leading Democrat to do. What made it a 
definite challenge to the President was the plain fact that 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 261 

the conduct of the war was to be taken partially, if not largely, 
out of his hands. 

Moreover, nineteen hundred of the "very best" people 
of New York were present at the luncheon. Elihu Root 
presided. When Chamberlain sat down, Colonel Roosevelt 
jumped to his feet in dramatic fashion applauding with all 
his might and declaring his hearty approval.^ Important 
newspapers like the New York Times, the Boston Transcript, 
the Providence Journal, and scores of others in the industrial 
districts, united in the declaration that the Government had 
failed, that Wilson's Cabinet was a farce. The New York 
Tribune said that the European governments agreed that 
the LTnited States had failed.^ The Manufacturers' Record, 
of Baltimore, the bitterest opponent of Wilson from the 
start in 1913, was cited as a Southern industrial organ utterly 
hopeless of Wilson and Baker. 

It was all the logical and planned result of the campaign 
of opposition that had gone on since September. Whether 
Colonel Roosevelt would or not he must be the leader and the 
beneficiary of the campaign. If the Chamberlain scheme 
succeeded, a war cabinet would take over part of the duties 
of the presidency and there would be intense and bitter feel- 
ing in Washington with Roosevelt the inevitable co-tribune 
of Wilson. It was the first great gun of the congressional 
campaign of 1918, which in turn would be the beginning of 
that of 1920. 

Senator Chamberlain returned to Washington to press his 
scheme for a war cabinet. Neither he nor any other of the 
leaders had consufted the President. It was, in fact, intended 



'The New York Times for January 20, 1918, gave a full account of the luncheon. All tk« 
papers in the country "carried" the story in full. Old men met on the streets of leading 
eities next day and said: "What about Chamberlain? Is he not a great patriot?" 

*T!te Literary Digeat, February 2, 1918. 



262 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

as an administrative revolution. On January 22nd, Wilson 
ga\'^ out a statement that Senator Chamberlain's New York 
speech was an astounding and absolutely unjustifiable . dis- 
tortion of the truth. He added that he had not been con- 
sulted about the proposed war cabinet and that he must as- 
sume that Mr. Chamberlain was an out-and-out opponent 
of the Administration. But in spite of all, Roosevelt went to 
Washington on January 23rd, set up a miniature court at the 
home of his son-in-law, Representative Longworth, where 
he directed the fight upon the President and where Chamber- 
lain and scores of other members of Congress, besides admirals 
and diplomats, called to pay their respects or to plan the 
maneuvers so auspiciously set afoot. ^ For a time it looked 
as if Wilson would be unable to weather the storm. 

But he met the situation. Mr. Edward R. Stettinius of 
the house of J. P. Morgan, which had handled much of the 
munitions business for Great Britain since 1914, was called 
to Washington and asked to straighten out the cross purposes 
of the War Department and to become a sort of minister of 
munitions in the Wilson Administration. Stettinius readily 
accepted ; and the part of the public which had no partisan 
interest to serve was satisfied. Mr. Baker was contented 
and none of the bureau chiefs resigned. 

When the general public came to realize what was afoot, 
a quick rallying to Wilson occurred. Of course every im- 
portant Southern paper supported him. The Springfield 
Republican, of Massachusetts, made staunch defence of 
the Administration and even the New York Times gradually 
changed its tone. But now, as on a hundred other occasions, 
the Western and Northwestern papers and public gave the 
decisive voice. William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette 



»The "American Yearbook" for 1918, p. 4, gives the beat summary of the movement in 
Congress. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 263 

said that the country had named the President in 1916 and the 
country must abide the decision, distasteful as that might be. 
"There is no use crying over spilt milk," he added, humor- 
ously. Most other Northwestern papers held the same tone. 
They would not have a war cabinet. Nor had they lost con- 
fidence in the President. 

It was now that Wilson made one of his quickest and most 
masterly moves. The Democrats in both houses had suffered 
themselves to be frightened or, at any rate, disorganized 
by the extraordinary attacks which I have just described. 
Many of them were sore about patronage, the price of wheat 
which Wilson would not allow to be raised, or the difficulties 
of the War Department. And the world-wide depression 
lent gravity to the crisis. Democrats were giving increasing 
support to the Roosevelt plan for a war cabinet. The turn in 
public opinion in the Northwest and the increasing conviction 
that a new cabinet with Roosevelt at its head would make for 
conflict at home rather than increased strength abroad non- 
plussed them. Wilson suddenly sent in a bill asking for all 
the powers that were proposed for the new war cabinet and 
many more. He first asked the most reactionary Democrat 
in the Senate, Martin of Virginia, to introduce his bill. 
Martin refused, although he was the oflScial leader of the 
body ; he could not be a party to the granting of such dicta- 
torial powers as the President asked even though he had been 
the dictator of Virginia for twenty years. 

Senator Overman, a very cautious states rights man, 
but a real friend of the President, introduced the bill early 
in February, 1918. The idea of a new war ministry with 
what was called a "he-man" at its head was still uppermost 
in congressmen's minds. The one thing the investigation 
into the affairs of the War Department had shown was that 
the bureau chiefs an<l the red tape of peace-time affairs were 



264 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

responsible for most of the difficulties complained of. This 
Wilson had in part remedied by the appointment of Stettinius. 
His new bill would go still further. It would give the Presi- 
dent power to rearrange the bureaus and fix duties to suit 
himself. It would empower him to set up new machinery 
for war work which the President thought necessary. It 
would make Wilson as much of an autocrat as Lincoln had 
been at any time during the Civil War.^ 

Mr. Chamberlain was immediately relegated to the scrap 
heap by this proposal. Everybody began to discuss it. 
Men who had demanded more war powers for "he-man" 
work could not complain that the President asked even greater 
powers. The public liked the boldness of the move. Since 
Wilson asked for these extraordinary powers for the duration 
of the war only, business men who had wanted the war 
cabinet were contented. People generally desired action 
if it could be had. They were less particular about any 
particular man in action. Roosevelt, although he was never 
deserted by his followers, was now like Chamberlain, without 
a grievance. The movement that had been aimed at a divi- 
sion of the powers and the duties of the President had failed. 
But Hoke Smith and Reed, of the judiciary committee of the 
Senate, persisted in their opposition to anything Wilson pro- 
posed. Sherman of Illinois was quite as bitter and spec- 
tacular in his attacks. But the issue was settled w^hen 
Chamberlain and some of the Republicans, like Borah and 
Nelson, announced that they would vote for the new grant 
of powers. The irreconcilables continued obstructive tac- 
tics till April 29th when by a vote of 63 to 13 the bill was 
passed.^ The House acted quickly and the issue was closed. 



'"The United States Statutes at Large," 65 Cong., Vol. 40, pt. 1, pp. 556-7. 
'"The American Yearbook," 1918, gives account of the Senate discussions, pp. 5-6. Of course 
Tht Congrestioruil Record, patiim, gives details. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 265 

Wilson was more powerful than ever and every day the events 
of the war added to his prestige. 

As already described, the legislation which gave the War 
and Navy departments immense sums, the military situation 
in the world, the control of the vast railway and shipping 
businesses of the United States, food control, the sedition 
act, and all the interests and powers devolving upon the 
presidency due to the fixing of unprecedented income taxes 
and the collection of the Liberty loans made Wilson the 
master of America. And the fact that the United States 
was the one great solvent and fresh power of the world just 
entering the war lent Wilson still other powers that no other 
man of any country ever exercised. 

What gave anxious thought to conservative men in the 
North after the failure of the plan for a war cabinet and a shar- 
ing of responsibility and leadership with the Republicans was 
the so-called internationalism of Wilson. People are inher- 
ently conservative. They love the old ways. If the war was 
to close with old institutions discredited it would be worse to 
conservatives like Lord Lansdowne in England or Senator 
GaUinger in the United States than a German victory, for 
after all the Junkers did protect property and keep people 
in their proper places. But Wilson had begun in 1913 with 
the statement that the people then resumed control of their 
affairs. He followed with an amazing programme of action 
that practically transformed the government, its tariff sys- 
tem, its banking arrangements, and most of all its methods 
of Federal taxation. Every industrial district and every 
financial group felt the change to be a blow. And when 
Wilson at last entered the great war, the great articulate 
elements of the country which had fought him from the be- 
ginning and which had always urged him into the struggle, 
found him declaring it a revolution, a people's war through- 



266 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

out the world against all groups and systems everywhere 
which sought to exploit men. 

The fourteen points were already christened the fourteen 
commandments which all conservative interests must combat. 
He said to the Senate on February 11, 1918, that we fought 
for a "new international order" and without that new order 
at the end of the war the world would be without peace. 
And likewise disconcerting was the closing remark of the 
same address that the power of the United States "will never 
be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish 
interest of our own."^ It was the language of the Mobile 
address and a self-denial which great numbers of people were 
unwilling to make and which many newspapers had de- 
nounced when it was first made. 

In New York, where the President was given an unprece- 
dented ovation on May the 18th, the same semi-revolutionary 
thought seemed to pervade his appeal on behalf of the Red 
Cross. It will be remembered that in no other war had the 
Government gone directly to the people for its loans. The 
bankers had had a monopoly of the management and profits 
of war loans. Bankers were present to hear Wilson in great 
numbers on this occasion. He said: "You can not take 
much satisfaction in lending money to the Government, 
because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets. 
It is a commercial transaction; and some men have even 
dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the in- 
cidental commentary that that constitutes upon their at- 
titude." Now New York bankers were the very men who 
cavilled at the rate of interest. They were the men who had 
insisted most upon American entrance into the war; and they 
heard with poorly veiled anger this shrewdly dealt diagnosis 
of their own case. Nor was the compliment to the hard- 

•" Address of the President to Congress," February 1 1, 19VS- 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 267 

working women of the Red Cross without its valuable reve- 
lation of Wilson's spirit: "It fills my imagination to think 
of the women all over this country who are busy to-night 
and are busy every night and every day, doing the work of the 
Red Cross, busy with a great eagerness to find out the most 
serviceable thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness of all the 
old frivolities of their social relationships." The old frivoli- 
ties! What had not the members of the Chevy Chase Club 
said about him for withholding himself from their frivolities? 
And what had fashionable Washington folk not said about a 
President who would have no contacts with their time- 
consuming and over-sophisticated set? 

In every address, notably at Mount Vernon on July 4, 
1918, Wilson renewed the ideas of the fourteen points and 
of the new international order. At New York on September 
27th, when he said his worst about Germany and her auto- 
cratic system, he recurred again and again to "a people's war," 
"sweeping processes of change," and the new interpretation 
to be put upon Washington's Farewell Address. He repeated 
the idea that business men still thought they were playing a 
"game of power and playing for high stakes." His closing 
paragraph was a warning to European statesmen to say in 
public whether they thought his interpretation of the war 
and its purposes was in any sense wrong or contrary to 
theirs. 

Wilson talked like a free spirit, a man who would make 
the world over if it could be made over. And the daily 
unfolding powers of the country were such that no European 
statesman could then dispute his purposes. He was in the 
heyday of his power. A master in Washington in spite of 
the known hostility of a majority of Congress because an 
American president must always be a master in time of war, 
he meant to make men think again about fundamental human 



868 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

rights. He would make capitalists know the limitations 
of their power; he would compel labouring men, as in the case 
of the Government arsenals in Connecticut, to realize their 
responsibilities to the country and to society everywhere. 
Yet Wilson knew that most great men of his own country 
were bitterly hostile. He said to a personal friend early in 
September, 1918, that a larger sum was being expended to 
defeat his friends in the then pending congressional campaign 
than had been expended to defeat himself in 1916. Recent 
judicial proceedings show this to have been a correct judg- 
ment. He feared that European statesmen were still blindly 
opposed to an enlightened international policy; that members 
of Congress would not make themselves familiar with the 
great tasks they were elected to perform; that, after the end 
of the great struggle, men would fall again to quarrelling 
over the loaves and fishes. The faith of the people in him 
and in his interpretation of their desires, he said he knew with 
an instinct that he could not doubt. To some who saw him 
and talked freely with him in the month just before the first 
adverse election of his presidency and the armistice, he was 
humorous, apt with a telling story, frank in the discussion of 
great men and greater events. He received the news of the 
American victory at St. Mihiel with perfect satisfaction, as 
if he had expected it, but without that boisterous joy which has 
marked other leaders of opinion and observers of football 
games. It was a sad thing, the whole great war with its pos- 
sibly useless toll upon human life, useless unless men would 
make a different peace from that which they had ever made 
before. 

Such a man and such a leader could not but meet with 
the bitterest resistance. Six yeai-s he had been in power and 
w hat years they had been! It was not that men do not wish 
i;,;lit and justice and even mercy to prevail in the world, or 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 269 

in the United States. They fear new things. Representa- 
tives of old social forces like the Republican party could not 
contemplate a worse future than that which Wilson would 
inaugurate. Or, granting with Mr. Taft that they would 
do the same in office which they condemned out of office, 
Republicans could not approve a man whose whole conduct 
and line of policy pointed inevitably to a new political dy- 
nasty in the United States. It would have have been equiva- 
lent to political suicide for the opposition to approve Wilson; 
and great party groups do not commit suicide, however seri- 
ously individual leaders may take the current of events. 
There was nothing else but a party struggle for the autumn 
of 1918. And when Wilson was at the very height of his 
power both at home and abroad he must contend strenuously 
for a majority in Congress, even when he knew that the 
leaders of his party would count a Democratic victory as 
only a little better than a defeat, for it would add to the 
power of the President whom they feared and even hated. 

I have said that the failure of the movement for the war 
cabinet added to the President's prestige. It left a sting with 
those who had hoped to compel him to acquiesce in the form- 
ation of a coalition government and thus at last acknowledge 
that he and his party were incapable of conducting the 
affairs of the country. In the United States parties bear a 
different relation to each other and to the country from that 
in other constitutional governments. The Republicans 
represent, as all must know, the older social and economic 
forces of the North. Its leaders are generally more expe- 
rienced in large affairs, and its voters are apt to be better edu- 
cated than the voters of the rival party. Republicans belong 
to the fashionable and exclusive clubs. Few Democrats 
are seen in such places. Republicans own the great blocks 
of industrial and railway stocks. They sit on the boards of 



270 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the great banks. Such men and their supporters and con- 
nections can not conceive of a successful Federal administra- 
tion without their presence in the Cabinet. That was one of the 
reasons for the violent attacks of the autumn and winter of 
1917-18. Now, Wilson was about to prove that he and his 
colleagues could manage the greatest business any nation 
ever managed without official Republican aid. And for 
more than five years these very "unknown provincials" had 
actually succeeded and won four successive elections, if we 
count that of 1910. If the older social elements of the North 
were ever to return to the helm, they must win the congres- 
sional election of 1918. That was, in fact, the logical con- 
clusion of the fight of January. 

The Democratic party, as I have made clear in these pages, 
is the party of the older social forces of the South, farmers 
and small townsmen in the main. They have a great tradi- 
tion behind them, a tradition that reaches back to the Declara- 
tion of Independence and to Thomas Jefferson, the founder 
of a political dynasty that continued in power for twenty- 
four years. The republic itself is the work of farmers and 
its ideals are farmer ideals. This gives the Democratic party 
a hold on life that seems to defy all opposition, even long 
periods of banishment from the places of power. But this 
party had not been in power since the election of Lincoln;^ 
in reality, they had not been in power since the retirement of 
Andrew Jackson. Its leaders, often enough experienced in 
local affairs and sometimes conspicuous in Congress, are not 
accustomed to ministerial responsibility. They have shown 
a sort of deference to Republican leadership, as for example 
in tariff revision, that tended to increase the Republican 
complacency. But at the same time an ancient party, with a 



'1 have never considered Cleveland's two terms as real Democratic supremacy. Cleveland, 
shhough democratic at the beginning, was never free to do any great work. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 271 

vast section like the South behind it, can not confess to in- 
ability to govern. Their very provincialism confirms them in 
their self-confidence. Once in ofiice, they could not for a 
moment agree, as the British Liberals did in 1916, that they 
were unequal to their tasks. Certainly Mr. Wilson would 
never admit or imply that he was not equal to his high func- 
tion. Nor are there any Republicans who now maintain 
any such contention. Conspicuous ability has been the out- 
standing feature of his career as President. That very com- 
manding ability and political astuteness were the main spurs 
to the opposition. Wilson was about to found a political 
dynasty. He must be defeated. 

Thus the two elements in the national life confronted each 
other as the elections of 1918 approached. The Republicans 
must carry all their industrial states and a few Western 
states. The emergency led to the closest cooperation of all 
the factions of 1912. Roosevelt met Taft in a New York 
hotel and renewed their erstwhile friendship, or at least ap- 
peared to do so. Mr. Hughes, who had held the two wings 
of the party fairly together in 1916, contributed his share of 
the work. Hiram Johnson of California, who had been ac- 
cused of "electing Wilson" in 1916 by his maneuvers in his 
state, did his utmost to be counted regular. The greater 
banking and industrial interests lent "oil for campaign pur- 
poses." From the Republican point of view it was only a 
genuine harmonizing that needed to be done. Enough Re- 
publican voters were certainly in the country, Republicans 
like Democrats, generally, being born not made. 

The President sought to strengthen his side in the conflict 
by attaching to himself Progressive and able leaders like 
Henry Hollis of New Hampshire, Bainbridge Colby of New 
York, Victor Murdock of Kansas, and Francis J. Heney of 
California. These were all states in which there was a 



m WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

closely divided population as between the older Republican- 
ism and the newer democracy, which W'ilson preached. And 
many Republicans in those states were open-eared Progres- 
sives before 1912. Other men of a more strictly political 
complexion the President undertook to make messengers 
of his faith— Governor Walsh of Massachusetts, with an 
intensely Irish support; Senator Lewis of Illinois, supported 
by the Dunne and opposed by the Sullivan forces; and Joseph 
Daviess of Wisconsin, a weak knight-errant of Democracy. 
Still another class of people in the North were influenced 
greatly by the close political friendship between W'ilson and 
Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of 
Labour, and Henry Ford, the "erratic" manufacturer, of 
Michigan. Through all of these the President pressed his 
case in the industrial region. And the more men of the char- 
acter of Colby and Ford and Heney admired him, the more 
the souls of Southern Democrats like Senator Simmons and 
Senator Underwood were tried. But all held together just 
as the diverse elements of the Republicans held together; 
and the campaign was very bitter, despite the "adjournment 
of politics." 

I have remarked already in these pages that whoever 
attains high political leadership in the United States has a 
very complex and difficult task. A chance blunder or a silent 
unrecognized influence may play havoc with the plans of the 
best of men. The German Government, suddenly aware of 
the catastrophe that lay just ahead, changed its prime min- 
ister, assumed the garb of a parlour socialist, and called upon 
Wilson for an armistice upon the basis of the fourteen points! 
It was October 5th that the new Chancellor, Prince Maximilr 
ian, sent this offer. Of all the surprises that could have come 
at that time this must have been the greatest to Wilson. To 
have the Kaiser talk his fourteen points! The explanation 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 27S 

was that Germany knew she was beaten, and she thus recog- 
nized that Wilson, a sort of umpire in the great war till the 
winter of 1917, was the only hope of a tolerable peace from 
the Berlin point of view. Germany professed liberalism 
and democracy and asked for the benefits accorded to a new 
convert, wished a baptism from the great Democrat. 

Wilson replied two days later asking for evidence of true 
conversion. His note, which might have been a repetition 
of Grant's famous demand at Fort Donelson, was true to his 
character and career. "Does the imperial Chancellor mean 
that the German Government accepts the fourteen points?" 
"Do the military men of Germany agree to withdraw all their 
armies from occupied territory?" And finally, "The Presi- 
dent wishes to know whether the Chancellor speaks for the 
old group who have conducted the war, or does he speak for 
the liberated peoples of Germany?" These were Wilson's 
queries. They were natural from him. They were not astute 
traps as some wise men said they were. He could not be- 
lieve his own ears and he wished to make sure, the more since 
any response at all would reveal the character of the new 
ministry in Berlin and at the same time show the people of 
Germany what the reality was. The queries of Wilson were 
astute in that they were frank and simple. 

His queries were not unreasonable, the less so since he, 
like Lincoln, was not a man of passion and anger, but an in- 
tellectual who counted the value of his words and estimated 
the distant consequences as well as the immediate results of 
his moves. The country, however, was not Wilson, much as 
some men believed in him. Common men can not wage war 
and keep in good humour. They reply in kind. The Ger- 
mans were the Huns, not one of them should be permitted 
to escape the consequences of their cruel war. For a whole 
year the President and especially his lieutenants had neces- 



274 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

sarily stirred men to anger; officers in the training camps had 
taught young men to swear and work themselves into the 
necessary state of mind for driving their bayonets through 
wicked and vicious men, Germans, at the front. How else 
was war to be conducted? Did not the Germans do the same? 
This spirit had permeated the body of the people. It had 
not taken possession of Wilson, as it had of Lloyd George or 
Clemenceau. The people could not understand the Wilson 
tone. Easterners who had for years imagined that their 
houses were in imminent danger of German aircraft were 
beside themselves with rage. Southerners who always took 
Wilson as their spokesman, if not their prophet, were non- 
plussed. Why did he not say: "You d Huns, lay down 

your arms and take what's coming to you?" 

The exchange of notes^ in early October thrust another and 
a disturbing influence into the sectional and social conflict al- 
ready being waged. And as the time for balloting ap- 
proached Wilson appealed directly to the people over his own 
name to "return a Democratic majority to both the Senate 
and House of Representatives," otherwise he would be em- 
barrassed as their spokesman both in domestic and foreign 
affairs.^ At once a bitter cry went up from all Republican 
groups that the presidency had been used unfairly against an 
honest opposition, observing the truce of the preceding win- 
ter. The Democrats, realizing that the President was im- 
mensely stronger than their party, made the utmost use of 
the appeal. Whether it produced any effect has been de- 
bated till the present moment. But one thing is clear from 
the discussion, namely, that the conflict and the motives to 
the bitterness of the campaign were sectional quite as much 
as partisan. 



'The notes anil press oomraent in The Literary Digest, October 19, 1918. 
'The appeal and comment in Tlie Literary Digest, November 16, 1918. 



ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 275 

•1 
The result was a victory for the Repubhcans. Both the 
Senate and the House would be organized when they next 
assembled, sometime after ]\Iarch 4, 1919, by the Republi- 
cans. There were no Progressives on the list of successful 
candidates. But the majority in the Senate was so close 
that the Republicans could control the body only by appeas- 
ing and conciliating the offended and persecuted La Follette 
of Wisconsin. And La Follette was more of a German in 
political support than a Republican. In the House the 
majority was larger. Speaker Clark, who had never been 
inwardly a friend of Wilson, would be displaced by a speaker 
who would organize the body in the interest of the conserva- 
tive and industrial North. And, finally, in May, 1919, when 
Congress was called in special session, Speaker Gillett and 
every chairman of nearly every important committee in the 
House was found to represent the great industrial states of 
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. It 
was a transfer from the leadership of the agricultural South 
to that of the industrial North. The change was sectional.^ 
But Wilson, having won a magnificent victory in January 
when the country seemed to be least satisfied with the con- 
duct of the war had now, on the eve of the great negotiations, 
when, above all, he needed a united country behind him, lost 
control. He must negotiate a peace, set up that new demo- 
cratic world of which he had written the sketch in the four- 
teen points, with the majority of his country out of sympathy 
with him, and Congress seeking cause for fault-finding, cause 
even for impeachment! It was a bitter cup that had been 
handed him; but it was not more bitter than other presidents 
have been compelled to drain. Jefferson was almost exactly 
in the same predicament the last year he was in office. Jack- 
son felt the foundations slipping from under him before he 

•SUkni'-nt of Nicholas Longwortb in Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1919. 



276 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

turned over his baton of leadership to Van Buren in 1837. 
And a visitor to the House of Representatives the last year 
of Lincoln's life was introduced with loud and sarcastic 
words: "I introduce you to the only friend of the President 
in this house !"^ Must it ever be so? Truly, one may refuse 
to envy presidents. But how would Wilson succeed in the 
great adventure? What would that world peace be of which 
he had talked so nobly? That query must be answered in 
the next chapter. 

ijsaac N. Arnold, "Life of Abraham Lincoln," p. "'*"i. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

EVENTS moved fast in the autumn of 1918 and the 
whole world was in a state of tense excitement. Presi- 
dent Wilson was the one trusted leader of the liberal forces 
of mankind. On September 29th, two days after the bellige- 
rent speech in New York, the military authorities of France 
and Bulgaria concluded an armistice at Salonika. Six days 
later the Central Powers made their dramatic appeal for a 
peace based upon the fourteen points. On October 18th, the 
Emperor of Austria-Hungary issued a decree that "Austria 
must become, in conformity with the will of its people, a 
confederate state, in which each nationality shall form on the 
territory which it occupies its own local autonomy." 

This was an attempt to save the Hapsburg monarchy by 
an appeal to one of the fourteen points. It was true to the 
general philosophy of the Central Powers from the beginning 
that a responsible head of a government might cast adrift 
peoples whom it had agreed to aid. The fourteen points had 
been offered to the Central Powers nearly a year before in the 
hope that the bloody campaigns of that year might be 
avoided. They had not been accepted. They had been 
jeered at by Germans and Austrians. Between January and 
October, 1918, President Wilson, as one of the many war 
measures, and in accordance with his general ideal of the 
self-determination of peoples, had recognized Professor 
Masaryk as the president of Czecho-Slovakia, with fairly 

277 



278 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

definite boundaries. Moreover, Protestant America had rc' 
garded the people of Czecho-Slovakia as unfortunate and 
oppressed fellow Christians since the Thirty Years' War.^ 
He had also agreed to recognize the claims of the Jugo-Slavs 
of Austro-Hungary to independence. Although a great num- 
ber of Germans in the United States promptly indicated their 
sympathy with the Austrian plan, Wilson announced on 
October 19th that many events had transpired since January, 
that the United States would not regard the so-called auto- 
nomy of the subject peoples of Austro-Hungary then to be 
provided for as valid. The various peoples of that distracted 
region had already determined their own fortunes. 

On October 30th, Turkey made her submission. And on 
the same day the military authorities of Austro-Hungary 
offered to surrender to Italy. Five days later the Haps- 
burgs signed an armistice that left that former great mon- 
archy perfectly helpless before the inter-allied conference in 
Paris. There was nothing else but for the Hohenzollerns to 
submit, bitter as that alternative undoubtedly was. Men 
everywhere recalled the ominous threats to crush France in 
the early days of the terrible struggle, the millions of copies of 
"Hindenburg's March Upon London" that were sold over the 
whole world, and the claims of the Pan-Germans that they 
would have Russia, France, England, and the smaller powers 
all at their mercy. The Kaiser's speeches about his shin- 
ing sword, his understanding with God himself, and the 
warnings that all men must abandon the seas of the world 
till Germany could work her will upon Europe, could not 
be removed from the minds of men, as they never can be 
erased from the pages of history. It was a bitter pill. But 



lOn July i, 1918, a mass meeting of Czecho-Slovaks in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, issued 
a formal Declaration of Independence. President Wilson lent his support to this movement 
and finally announced .\merican recognition of Czecho-Slovakiu on Septeml^er i, 1918, 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 279 

orthodox churchmen and simple country folk remember well 
the saying that "pride goeth before a fall," and that great 
arrogance but invites destiny to do its work. The Kaiser 
made his submission by hastily deserting his country on 
November 10th. On the next day the last great armistice was 
signed. The German empire which Bismarck had built upon 
"blood and iron," as he had been fond of boasting, lay in 
ruins. The whole race of German princes lay prone upon the 
ground.^ Never was a more marvellous series of events; 
never did a group of nations more richly deserve their fate 
than did those powers which had associated with Germany in 
her long and terrific assault upon the rest of mankind. 

Any close observer of events of October and November, 
1918, can hardly have failed to notice that Wilson was 
taken by surprise. Germany had such a superb organi- 
zation; the German people were apparently so devoted to 
their Hohenzollern leadership; and they had won so many 
campaigns in which they had been expected to exhaust their 
power, that few Americans really believed their eyes and ears 
as one astounding piece of news followed another. The 
American army command had more than two million men in 
France and a million three hundred thousand at the front. 
American munition makers were just beginning to deliver 
their most terrible weapons of war, including immense quan- 
tities of the deadly mustard gas; great naval guns, mounted 
on specially made railway cars, were being prepared to meet 
the heaviest German guns; while the combined British and 
American war fleets were developing their extreme efficiency 
day by day. That Germany would suddenly throw up her 
hands and quit had not been expected anywhere. That was 
supposed to come in the summer of 1919. And by that time 



'The ■' American Yearbook," 1918, gives excellent summarie* of all these events, pp. 110-ltl. 



280 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Wilson expected to have his plans ready both for a cau 
tious reconstruction at home and a fixed programme at the 
Peace Conference. He had always been forehanded. In 
November, 1918, the Central Powers were crushed like an 
egg-shell. The President for once in his life was unready; 
he fell back upon a political hand-to-mouth regimen.^ 

Europe now lay in ruins. Russia was torn by factions, 
led by men to whom hatred was a master motive, and broken 
by Germany into half a dozen helpless states. The peoples 
who had fought Germany so long were at the point of starva- 
tion, not excepting England once the richest of them all. 
From eight to ten million soldiers had been killed; more than 
that number of other men, women, and children had lost their 
lives as a result of the war. The United States alone of the great 
peoples of the world remained rich and prosperous, stronger 
both in man power and in resources, than any likely com- 
bination of nations. At the head of the United States, as a 
strange fortune would have it, stood the one idealist in high 
position in all the world, a man who could speak in tones that 
none could hush, and to whom all the oppressed peoples everj'- 
/\ where looked as to a second Messiah.^ It was a terrible 
responsibility. How would Wilson meet the coming tests, 
greater tests than were ever put to any other leader of man- 
kind? 

If the people of the United States had been united that 
November day when Wilson actually began the new ordering 
of the modern world, great things must quickly have been ac- 
complished and indeed a new era inaugurated. The sudden 
turn of things would not have worked so much ill. But 
the reader of these pages knows that the United States was 



'This seems evident in the President's address to Congress on December S, 1918. 
'Ray Stannard Baker, who was in Europe at the time as a reporter for tl)e President, in a 
•cries of syndicated articles for the American newspapers, October-November, 1919. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE £81 

not then, and had never before been, anything like a unit.^ 
I will not rehearse here the evidence of the sharp and grow- 
ing sectional hostility, the distress of the best of Republican 
men and women that Wilson should be President at that 
great moment, or the suppressed anger of hosts of Germans 
who could not forgive him for bringing down upon the heads 
of the German rulers the awiul doom that came with the 
armistice. Every intelligent man who sees what goes on in 
our cities or hears what is said upon the market places of the 
country towns knows that the existence of these elements neg- 
atived the idea that we, as a people, could then function in 
world affairs as a unit. 

To make the situation more difficult, the recent election 
gave responsibility to a group of men in Congress who either 
from deep-set economic or bitter partisan reasons must op- 
pose the President, no matter whether he did well or ill. And 
the very nature of Wilson, as well as the effect of his writings 
upon government, stiffened his neck against the leaders of 
the new majority. Wilson believed in the principle of a re- 
sponsible ministry, such as that of Great Britain; but, al- 
though the election had gone against him, he could not re- 
sign. Indeed it may very well be doubted whether the 
Democrats would not have won a great victory if the Presi- 
dent's name had been on the ticket. The American system 
is not a flexible one. The people of the country, knowing 
that Wilson must represent them in the coming peace con- 
ference, for reasons most conflicting and confusing, deliber- 
ately weakened his hand. They set up a Congress which in 
the nature of things must be guided by men who were both 
political and personal enemies of the President. And before 
the election took place, as if to commit the country to a 
foreign policy opposed to that of Wilson, Colonel Roosevelt 

'Except perhaps at certain emotional climaxes like that of April, 1917. 



282 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and Senator Lodge made up and announced a Republican 
foreign programme in which W^ilson's ideas were flaunted.^ 
The Roosevelt-Lodge terms were frankly imperialistic. 
They reasserted the doctrine of might and hate which the 
Germans had exhausted. 

But the opposition leaders were not content merely to 
resist the diplomacy of the President. They gave the peoples 
of the allied countries the opinion that the United States 
favoured theirmore ruthless policies rather than the milder and 
more humane views of Wilson. A poll of the press of the coun- 
try during the latter days of November, 1918, would reveal an 
unprecedented disposition to thwart the only man who could 
constitutionally speak for the country. Revenge, indemni- 
ties, and drastic economic repression were the common talk. 

And when Wilson decided to go in person to Paris, there 
was a loud protest in Congress, although the question did 
not, of course, come to a vote. Newspapers like the New 
York Sun insisted that the President did not represent 
the country. Two of the most eminent lawyers of the East 
gave out studied opinions that, if Wilson left the shores of the 
United States, he would ipso facto cease to be the head of the 
nation.^ An effort was made to get an order of court to de- 
clare the office of president vacant, and it was publicly stated 
that the Vice-President must enter the AMiite House. For 
weeks the front pages of the newspapers were almost daily 
occupied with stories of this sort. One paper insisted that 
ninety -five per cent, of the people viewed the President's trip 
to Europe with "misgiving and dislike." With Congress in 
an ugly frame of mind, the country recently committed to a 
return to Republican ideas, and the great body of conserva- 



'This is too well understood to require proof. But to those who may nisii proof referer.c 
ij made to the files of the Chicago Tribune. December 19, 1918. 
'George W. Wickersham, former attorney-general, and ex-Scuator George F. Edmands. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 283 

live America fearful of those "ideals" which would not 
allow Wilson to take something out of the common European 
debacle for the United States, the President certainly had 
reason to fear that he would not be able to press the 
country's cause successfully before the assembled diplomats 
of Europe and the whole world. ^ 

Nor did the older social elements of Europe wish Wilson 
to appear at the conference. The effect of Wilson's fourteen 
points was certainly very great in Germany and in Austro- 
Ilungary. Wilson did as much to break the power of 
Germany by the constant repetition of his ideals as any 
military commander whatsoever. This was all well enough 
so long as the war was actually waging. But when it ceased, 
the London Saturday Review, true to its character, declared 
against them. Stephen Pinchon, the French Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, agreed with the London conservatives in the 
view that Germany must pay huge indemnities and that in- 
dividual Germans must hang by the hundred for obedience 
to the orders of an emperor already dethroned.^ Mr. Lloyd 
George was preparing to wage a campaign for a return of a 
parliament friendly to him on the cry of "pay to the last 
shilling." 

It seems that no one stopped to estimate what it would be 
possible for the German people to pay in half a century. The 
sum of the damage which they had done, and seemed glad to 
do at the time, including the havoc wrought in Poland, 
Russia, Roumania, Servia, and Italy, as well as that done 



•Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1918. This paper throughout the late autumn and winter 
continued to quote the London Morning Post, a bitterly anti-American paper with a reported 
circulation of only 30,00!), as the press of London. It seldom if ever took note of what the 
London Daily News or the Manchester Guardian said. In London and Paris the imperialistic 
press quoted the Chicago Tribune and other similar American papers as the "press of the 
United States." 

*TIie Literary Digeat. Noveralx>r 10, 1918, gives brief quotations to that effect. 



284 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

on the western front and upon the sea, must have been greater 
than the sum of the wealth of Germany, Austria, and Hun- 
gary. If actual damages amounted to so much what must 
indemnities, levied after the Bismarckian ideal, have totalled? 
At the time a great demand was being made up in the United 
States, in England, and France for the last dollar, there 
was a vigorous and popular campaign in each of the coun- 
tries concerned against the purchase of any kind of goods 
from Germany,^ Men who are called wise appeared to think 
that one or two hundred million dollars could be collected 
from peoples with whom nobody was to trade, and living in 
regions that did not produce foodstuffs sufficient for their own 
consumption ! Men shrunk from the Metternich philosophy 
that a whole people might be destroyed and the world not 
suffer, and yet they proposed terms of settlement which must 
either have destroyed Germany entirely or left her to nurse a 
grievance too great to be borne in peace. ^ 

Wilson did not agree with men who urged such impos- 
sible measures. He stood upon his fourteen points. Be- 
cause he did not, like Lloyd George, join in a campaign 
of pure demagoguery;^ because Wilson refused to talk 
wildly and hoped to bring Germany penitent back into the 
family of civilized nations, he was attacked by men of the 
highest political and social standing in every country. 
One can not but think of Colonel Roosevelt's language during 
the last months of his life; and thousands who have so long 
admired him must apologize or make explanations or allow 



^Manufactwer'a Record, quoted in The Literary Digest, November 9, 1918. 

'Isaac F. Marcosson in New York Times, of December 5, 1918, and many other papers re- 
flected this view: "The allies do not want any feelint's of altruism to prevail." See also New 
York Times, December 12, 1918. 

'This is a harsh term to apply to a man who did the world such a tremendous service as he 
rendered during the long war. But there seems to be no doubt that he knew that the promises 
he made on his campaign of 1918 could not be fulfilled. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 285 

him to be classed as something less than a statesman. What 
made Wilson's part so difficult was the fact that German 
leaders and German papers constantly spoke of Wilson as 
the friend of the Central Powers. The Frankfurter Zeit- 
ung, the best paper in Germany, said: "Wilson will fight on 
our side for freedom of trade and freedom of navigation."^ 
And the masses of the German people looked to him dur- 
ing the months of November and December as the one man 
in the world who might temper the hand of justice and 
certainly avert the sword of revenge. 

He could not announce his programme without weaken- 
ing himself and injuring the cause he served. The moment 
he made his purposes concrete every interest in the world 
that must suffer would begin to form combinations against 
him.2 Thus in spite of his widely heralded open diplomacy, 
his "open covenants openly arrived at," the bitterest op- 
position at home that any president had encountered since 
Andrew Johnson and the declared distrust of leaders in all 
the allied countries, he set out upon his journey. 

The members of the mission which accompanied him were 
Colonel Edward M. House, Secretary Lansing, General 
Bliss of the army, and Henry ^\Tiite, an experienced Republi- 
can diplomat of the McKinley-Roosevelt period. When the 
list was published there was an ontcry. Some insisted 
that senators should have been appointed, as had been the 
case when the treaty with Spain was drawn. ' But Wilson 
knew that he was not limited either in the constitution or by 
precedent to any particular class or classes of persons. His 

^The Literary Digest, November 03, 1918. 

=New York Times, December 3rd, made a strong though friendly demand for an itemized 
statement of his aims. One of the bitter debates of the Senate on this subject occurred on De- 
< ember 4tb. It was reported in all the papers of the country the day the President sailed. 

s.McKinley and the negotiations with Spain, 1898, will be found well described in C. S. 
Olcotfs " Life of William McKinley," Boston, 1916, II, Ch. 28. There was only one Demo- 
crat on the McKinley peace commission. 



286 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

contention then, as when he was a mere student of the opera- 
tions of the American Government, was that the president 
had full and absolute control of diplomatic affairs until a 
treaty was completed. Then the Senate's functions began. 
But he also knew well as a politician that a president often 
finds that his treaties are rejected for good or for no reasons 
whatever. If a great world treaty, such as must conclude 
the World War, were rejected by the Senate it would be a 
calamity. Why, then, did Wilson, in view of the recent 
election and in view of the importance of the occasion, not 
undertake to conciliate the Senate? 

That question can not be answered till many people now 
living pass away. But if one look about the country in 1918, 
there appear good reasons, if not sufficient ones, for the line 
of policy pursued by the President upon the eve of the most 
important move of his or any other man's life in half a cen- 
tury. In the first place, a group of senators, such as Mc- 
Kinley appointed, must inevitably have fallen into quarrels 
and disagreements once they were in Paris, such quarrels as 
weakened and almost defeated the American mission which 
negotiated the treaty of Ghent in 1815. The Republicans 
of the Senate would have been impossible. The appoint- 
ment of Democrats would not have been better in the then 
state of party and sectional opinion. But ex-President Taft, 
who was known to be friendly to the President, or Mr. Hughes, 
xould have satisfied the opposition. There was a strong 
feeling that Elihu Root^ ought to have been selected. There 
could hardly be any reason to doubt that Mr. Taft would 
have been a loyal and hard-working member of the mission. 
Yet Mr, Taft was needed at home. His appointment would 
have given rise to the feeling that the President wished to 
perpetuate the split between the Taft and the Roosevelt 

'Ante, p. 261, explains why close personal relations between Wilson and Root were impossible. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 287 

wings of the Republicans. Nor can there be any doubt that 
Republicans would have pressed Mr. Taft to stand firm for 
certain things which Wilson opposed and vice versa} Wil- 
son's old idea of undivided responsibility and the desire to 
hasten the negotiations rather than allow them to lag because 
of debates with his colleagues probably decided the appoint- 
ments. Nor was any real quarrel in order about the personnel 
of the mission. If the Democrats were equal to conducting 
the Government, then they were equal to conducting the 
negotiations. Lansing and House had worked conspicu- 
ously with the President through many crises, and there had 
not been serious complaint. Nobody made any opposition 
to General Bliss when he was first appointed to serve on the 
inter-allied conference. And as to Mr. White, the Republican 
party had held him in too high esteem in the great days that 
were gone for any cavil to be made in 1918. His ability, if 
not his representative character, was unquestioned. 

But there is another angle to the President's mission to 
Europe. In one of Wilson's earliest contributions to period- 
ical literature he said that there was growing up in the coun- 
try a cult to which historians and economists were giving 
their allegiance,^ a "cult of all the facts, the facts and nothing 
but the facts." It was the beginning of the German influence 
among American scholars. Wilson protested that if men 
ever did succeed in gathering all the facts they would not 
know what to do with them. And more than once in his 
early public life and even when he was seeking the nomination 
for the presidency he openly declared his distrust of experts. 
He believed in mastering the salient features of a problem or 
a movement and then applying reason, common sense, and 

'The Boston Herald and the New York Globe, with most other prominent Republican and 
io-C!ille(^independent papers made it perfectly plain that representative Repulilicons could not 
support his ideals; "akin to those of the British Labour Party," said the Glohe in derision. 

•The A'e«- Princeton Reviexr, lU, 18S-!»9, 



288 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

a little of that understanding of human nature of which he 
has shown himself at times such a master, till he arrived at a 
judgment as to what should be done. He instinctively feared 
experts. In this he was the very opposite of the Germans 
who worship the expert. And his reason is that so many ex- 
perts who pass for great in their fields are themselves be- 
wildered, and they bewilder others, when put to the test of 
leadership. 

I think the President has allowed his earlier observations 
of his teachers and perhaps his colleagues on college faculties 
to influence his judgment too far. He found that he could 
not get on in the great reforms of his first years in oflSce with- 
out the experts, although it must be confessed that some of 
them tried him sorely. But when he was about to sail for 
Paris he overcame all his scruples and took half a shipload 
of experts. It became a subject of some fun-making and not 
a little ridicule in Paris. There was an idle expert at every 
street corner in Paris ready to tell the President at any 
moment that the universe would collapse unless he made a 
certain specified decision within twenty-four hours.^ 

However, it was not the President who brought these 
specialists together; it was the patient Colonel House who for 
more than a year endeavoured with might and main to 
collect from as many as two hundred scholars such of the 
greater facts in the world as in their expectation would be 
needed at Paris. These men, it must be recorded to their 
credit, were glad to give of their time and stores of tested 
knowledge to the Government without charge, in some 
cases not even receiving refund of travelling expenses nor even 
presenting bills for them. From October 1, 1917, till the 
sailing of the George Washington on December 4th for Paris 
every country in the world, its geography, economics, 

iThcrc arc ever many such men in Washington. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 289 

boundaries, history, and ethnology, was studied, analyzed, 
reviewed, and charted for the benefit of the American com- 
missioners. There were diagrams of the coal fields, descrip- 
tions of the resources of the Shantung province of China, 
sketches of the racial mix-ups on all the borders of Russia, and 
lists of "good things" W'hich it was expected that some far- 
seeing minister might covet. If ever a national delegation 
had all knowledge at its elbow, it was that of the United 
States in Paris. Nor did this work cost the Government 
anything like market value, much as some unfriendly critics 
of Colonel House derided and found fault. 

That there were some inexperienced men, some unwise 
people who were trusted with important matters, and some 
experts more enthusiastic than learned does not invalidate 
the work as a whole. It only advertised it as honest and 
truly representative of the nation. Thus the President en- 
deavoured even against his prejudices to equip himself and 
his colleagues for their tasks. And on several occasions the 
information that was gathered and was always within reach 
served a most important purpose. Only the British com- 
missioners were equally well served. But British statesmen 
have for generations studied and really known, each for him- 
self, the world and its racial and economic bearings ; and they 
were perhaps the masters of the Americans, after all, in this 
respect. Without the House commission they must have 
been very much the superiors of all their rivals and com- 
petitors, if rivals and competitors are fair terms for describ- 
ing Britons and Americans in Paris. 

Being the representative of rural America, of the older 
Protestant elemente of the country as against the newer 
and modern industrial and urban groups, Wilson was 
the butt of attack and hostility till the very day of his 
sailing. Some European leaders of liberal views could not 



290 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

understand how the opposition in the United States could 
justify itself in attacking the men who must represent them 
at a great international council board. ^ When the United 
States Chamber of Commerce met early in December, just 
as Wilson was leaving New York, the press dispatches from 
the gathering declared that business as there represented was 
sharpening its tomahawk for a conflict with the President. 
Resolutions were offered asking for representation at Paris; 
the Webb Law, allowing American business men to combine 
against foreign business men in their export operations, must 
be amended and strengthened; a new protective tariff must 
be enacted to protect struggling American concerns against 
European competitors; the railroads must be returned to 
private ownership, and the vast American war-time shipping 
must be placed in private hands, duly subsidized from the 
public treasury. Only a bitter partisanship or a frenzied dis- 
trust of the President could have suggested such a programme 
at that critical time.^ Fashionable New York was disgusted 
and bitterly contemptuous of the President's entourage. 
There was hardly a well-known social "hght" on the whole 
sailing list. Women of "the highest circles" tried to make 
fun of all the women about the President, as if that could 
affect results. 

Articulate America was certainly in no mood for compli- 
ments that December morning when Wilson's ship lifted 
anchor. But inarticulate America was there to say him 
Godspeed. Great crowds of people crowded the wharfs, 
seeking a glimpse of the man whom they somehow trusted 

iMr. P. W. Wilson, a former member of the British House of Commons, a New York cor- 
respondent of the London Daily Neirs. expressed amazement at the attitude of New York 
C^ty in the winter of 1918-19. 

«The newspapers of December 5-7, 1918, were filled with the doings of the convention. A 
quieter tone was introduced and pressed toward the end of tiie meeting, as shown by tiie oth- 
eial pre eeedings. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 291 

and from whom they expected great things, too great things 
from mortal hands. ^ The workingmen of the country had 
come to admire Wilson, even if they had not been able to 
vote for him in 1916. The Radicals of New York showed 
an enthusiasm for him which did quite as much harm as 
good, for Hebrew and German Radicals do not command 
the support of that staid, practical democracy which has 
never quite lost its hold on the country. Women's organiza- 
tions, except that purely partisan group still burning the 
President in effigy in front of the White House, expressed 
their faith in him. The common man of the United States, 
in spite of the groanings of the conservative press, was con- 
tent to have Wilson go to Paris. He did not expect, as some 
great lawyers said they expected, to see any convulsion of 
either the political or the natural world the moment the 
George Washington passed beyond the territorial waters of the 
United States. 

And if the inarticulate folk of the United States looked 
upon Wilson as a great democrat set out upon a momentous 
mission, the mass of European peasantry, shopkeepers, and 
day labourers looked forward to his arrival in Europe as men 
looked in mediaeval times to the second coming of Christ. A 
great friend, rich as all the riches of this world could make one, 
kindly and sympathetic as only a great soul can be, and a 
fearless champion of the poor who had been "handed about 
from sovereignty to sovereignty for a thousand years," he 
was, even in the twentieth century, a "saviour" of Europe, 
fearless of rulers, diplomats, and rough-shod generals. A 
brother of Georges Clemenceau is reported to have said that 
no man since Jesus so filled the hopes of European mankind, 
and he added, after the excitement of Wilson's reception was 

>An experienced newspaper man who was present has said that the editorial offices of th» 
city were surprised at this and changed their tone at the last mcracnt. 



292 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK. 

passed, that history would award the President the highest 
place in her pages since the time of the GaUlean.^ 

In soberer phrase, Wilson did command more of the devo- 
tion of the masses of men in Europe than he did in his own 
country. They had been so sorely tried during four terrible 
years; they had been for so many centuries without a friend 
in high places, with the exception of Gladstone; and they had 
seen for so many generations the futility of wars that they 
could not fail to offer an almost sublime homage to the 
western President who journeyed to bloodstained Europe 
to redress the wrongs of nations and classes alike. The 
President had said that he was but a Scottish peasant. 
Eye witnesses whose word can not be doubted say that the 
expression of approval and even of enthusiasm was beyond 
all description. People from every district of France, soldiers 
from the field, women from every walk of life, and the 
grandees who had for a century contested at every step the 
progress of democracy in Europe united to pay Wilson hom- 
age.^ Whether this meant that a plebiscite would have re- 
sulted in an acceptance of the fourteen points or whether it 
meant that Frenchmen took this means to influence Wilson 
to abandon his fourteen points, one can not say. What- 
ever may be said, France had not made such a demonstra- 
tion since the time of the first Napoleon. 

But the American press that had opposed him since 1913 
gave disparaging accounts of the reception in their news 
columns and made similar comments in their editorials. One 
of the chief of these dispensers of information said it was al- 
most a frost, that the French looked on in Paris with silent 



'Thia was reported by one of the newspaper correspondents to a friend of the writer in 
Washington. It may or may not be absolutely correct, but it represents the thought of many 
Europeans. 

'New York Timet, December 15, 1918. The Time) had changed il^ altitude toward Wilson. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 29S 

indifference. It was "satisfactory from a national point of 
view, " but it was no real demonstration of enthusiasm. Nor 
did the event command a cross-page or even a top-page head- 
line, as almost any murder in the "red-light" district of its 
city always did.^ A little later Wilson went to England. 
There was the same outpouring of popular enthusiasm. 
Whether those in high station really wished this preacher of 
the doctrines of primitive Christianity to visit London or 
not, the most highly placed men in England joined the demon- 
stration. It is a fact now too well known all over the world 
that Wilson's visit to Paris, London, and Manchester, as well 
as the hurried trip through Italy from Turin to Rome and 
return, was one constant succession of unprecedented demon- 
strations. 

Bernard Shaw, the critic and reviler of officials everywhere, 
for once avowed his admiration. He published a series of arti- 
cles in the Hearst papers in which he made Wilson a Messiah 
for ancient and suffering Europe.^ The leaders of the British 
Labour party lent Wilson all the support they could com- 
mand. The Liberals were so proud of Wilson that they for- 
got Lloyd George. The Irish never tired of saying that he 
must grant them that independence which Irishmen had won 
for the Americans in the Revolution of 1776. The Germans, 
looking on from their terrible isolation, asked in their press if 
Wilson would not give them a chance to make a demonstra- 
tion. And both Irish and Germans in the United States gave 
evidence of the warmest approval. 

But the fire under the surface of political things broke out 
fiercely when Premier Clemenceau announced in the very 



'The Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1918. 

''The Hearst papers had been moderately friendly to the President since Aprfl, 1917. Thia 
was about the last evidence of that war-made approval. In January, 1919, the old revilinxi 
were renewed. 



294 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

midst of Wilson's triumphs in England, on December SOlh, 
that France stood for the old alliances and the old balance of 
power. Immediately the French Chamber of Deputies gave 
their approval to the premier in a vote 380 to 134. If Wil- 
son thought the fourteen points were accepted, he had only 
to read the daily comment of the American press handed 
him by a representative of the Creel bureau. The Boston 
Transcript said: "Perhaps European statesmen have learned 
what the majority in the United States think and, knowing a 
little of the powers of the Senate under the Constitution, they 
prefer to be in harmony with that majority than with a 
repudiated president." It argued that Senator Lodge was 
the true representative of American opinion. Wilson replied 
at Manchester in rather sharp phrases to the French min- 
ister. But he could not reply to the American press. He 
went on capitalizing popular opinion in Europe, accumulat- 
ing strength as best he could, and actually challenging the 
existing authorities in the allied countries till his Italian 
visit was concluded. It seemed that he might possibly win 
in the coming struggle, win what every one of the parties to 
the Peace Conference had already agreed to.^ 

Yet everyone who knew Wilson realized that he did not 
intend to set up a contest with the constituted authorities of 
the allied countries in any revolutionary sense. All his 
writings from early manhood ran counter to that. His four 
years of far-reaching reforms in his own country showed his 
true character. He would not tear down hoary institutions, 
but stir men to wholesome renovations. His purpose was to 
make great men stick to their commitments, made in the 
days of distress and terrible disaster. He warred against the 
temptations of success, against the misuse of powers which 



^Tlie Liierary Digest, January 11, 1919, gives press comment and the vote of the French 
deputies. I have abbreviated somewhat the typical language of the Transcript. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 295 

overwhelming success always makes so easy. But he was no 
revolutionary, even if kings did sit a little uneasy in London 
and Rome. He sat down to a royal feast at Windsor Castle. 
He was dined by Lloyd George in London and, when he 
appeared the second time in Paris, he returned Clemenceau's 
warm greeting with apparent sincerity. The statement 
about the old balance of power, the challenge of December 
30th, he would not discuss; not even the overwhelming vote of 
the Deputies seemed to disturb him, as the hostile demonstra- 
tions of the Republican majority in the United States ap- 
parently had not done. He said a little later: "It is not men 
that interest or disturb me primarily; it is ideas. Ideas live; 
men die." I can not understand his confidence and hope 
during the months of December and January of that mo- 
mentous winter. Is Wilson one of those royal natures who 
believe that the gods work for them.'' Or was it a sort of 
fatalism that sustained him in the belief that events would 
compel men to accept his ideas? Leaders must have votes. 
Wilson seemed to think that reason and the lessons of his- 
tory would avail against votes, against powers already set 
up. At any rate, he was bringing to an end his long cam- 
paign of emotionalism by which he hoped to stimulate man- 
kind to the point of doing what all liberal-minded men 
hoped for, what all conservative and timid men feared. 

I can not take the time to review the most remarkable of 
all his trips while in Europe, the journey to Rome. There 
the conditions were ripe for revolution. Great masses of 
men were within a few short days of actual starvation. The 
largess of the United States — if one may call loans on small 
prospect of repayment largesses — kept Italy going. Her 
industries, her food supply, and her very transportation 

'An excellent interpretation of the situation will be found in the Contemporary Review, AugiuV 
1819, by H. W. Harrij. 



296 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

system depended upon the United States and Great Britain. 
There was every reason in the world for the ItaUans to make 
demonstrations. They made them. But the leaders of the 
different parties and even the high officials of the Govern- 
ment sought to restrain the public and endeavoured to keep 
popular emotion within official bounds.^ At Milan the Presi- 
dent broke his own rules a little and let his feelings be known 
rather more than he had done elsewhere. He was almost 
persuaded to be a socialist. It seemed that the people 
almost worshipped him. Did the Italians even then expect 
to bend Wilson to their imperialistic demands on the Dal- 
matian coast, whereby they meant to close that coast against 
Jugo-Slavs, Hungarians, and Austrians alike? 

But Wilson's great task was about to begin. All these 
trips, the speeches he had made, and the hints to the rulers, 
and the reactionary forces that were gathering their strength 
for the encounter were but the climax to a campaign which 
he had begun with the declaration of war against Germany. 
The greatest things that mankind has ever done have been 
done through leaders who knew how to appeal to the emo- 
tions of men, to their higher natures as against their more 
selfish instincts. Wilson is a master in the art of stirring 
the feelings of vast multitudes. He is perhaps not a great 
orator, but he is the most consummate master of con- 
vincing statement known to American history, with the 
possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. His statements 
read like perfect demonstrations in mathematics. There is 
no appeal from them but by a confession of the meaner mo- 
tives of one's nature. It was his purpose to put out, restate, 
and reiterate the same higher purposes of the better spirits 
of all nations until he had created enough moral enthusiasm 



'Statements of eye witnesses who were in a position to know what maneuvers the Govern- 
ment made. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 297 

to carry men up to the high altitude of a noble peace, a peace 
that all mankind would ever quote and repeat, as men quote 
and repeat the Declaration of Independence. That was his 
objective. Would he succeed.'' He had made a great campaign, 
he had drawn to himself most of the Liberals of the world ; he 
had awakened the remote and inarticulate races of the earth ; 
and he had made of the Democratic party an element of 
support, although its leaders were not consumed with any 
fires of self-immolation. The challenge of Clemenceau, the 
prince of European reactionaries, was proof of the sweeping 
momentum of the President's purposes. The heated anger 
of the Bourbon groups in the United States, increasing in 
temperature with every succeeding wave of enthusiasm that 
broke at the feet of the President, was still clearer proof. It 
was an anomalous, unprecedented situation, that in which 
Wilson found himself in Paris early in January, 1919. All 
the world looked on; even poor Germany, licking her wounds 
and making piteous cries for food, made a part of the spec- 
tacle. But the day of emotionalism, good as emotionalism 
may be, in history, had gone. Reason and selfishness must 
now have their day. How would the modern St. George 
maintain his fight in that tightening atmosphere? 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE DAY OF RECKONING 

WHEN the conference met on January 15, 1919, in Paris, 
the new appHances of modern Hfe — the cable, the wireless, and 
the ubiquitous daily press — allowed all mankind to sit by and 
listen. All mankind was supremely interested; all nations 
had felt the blows of the German militarists; and every 
European people was confronted with certain starvation 
if perchance the struggle were renewed or the grain fields of 
America failed. Some of the peoples, like those of Russia and 
Austria-Hungary, ill-trained, war-weary, and without hope 
for the future, had lost all control of themselves and added 
the menace of chaos to the fear of starvation. As I have said, 
the people of the United States alone were strong, well- 
nourished, and making money as no other people had ever 
made money, either in time of war or peace. 

In 1914, the foreign commerce of the United States 
amounted to $3,900,000,000. In 1918, it amounted to 
$9,200,000,000. The balance of trade in favour of the Ameri- 
cans in the former year had been $324,000,000; in the latter it 
was $3,000,000,000. In 1914, the citizens and corporations 
of the United States owed the citizens and corporations of 
foreign countries about $4,000,000,000; in 1918, all this pri- 
vate debt had been paid and doubtless a greater one against 
Europe had been contracted. But the governments of Europe 
owed that of the United States nearly $9,000,000,000. It 
has, since December, 1918, been increased to $10,000,000,000! 

298 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 299 

Was there ever anything Uke it before? In the Far East 
American business men were becoming the masters. In 
South America, the trade of the United States was more than 
three times as great as it had been before the war. Into 
Mexico, in spite of all the newspaper talk of enmity and war- 
fare, three times as great a volume of American goods entered 
as ever before. 

Nor was this prosperity all. The domestic trade of Ameri- 
can business men, which in 1914 had totalled $30,000,000,000 
annually, in 1918 amounted to $68,300,000,000. The grain 
and cotton crops of the United States in 1914 were worth 
about $5,000,000,000; in 1918, they amounted to the huge sum 
of $12,000,000,000.1 In the United States, while thirty billions 
had been spent in the effort to save the world from German 
domination, every man who had a share in the direction of 
what are called the producing and trading classes was making 
money. Besides, labour received wages unprecedented and 
silent capital earned returns that were amazing. Only the 
salaried folk — the teachers of men's children, clerks in small 
businesses and country banks, and the officials of governments, 
national, state, and city — had not felt the new prosperity, were 
in fact compelled to wear patched clothes and walk while all 
the rest of the world drove past them in limousines or Fords. 

This prosperous America Wilson represented at Paris. And 
this prosperous America had, as we know, gotten away from 
him in the November elections. Besides, he was at the end 
of a long term of office and naturally weaker in political re- 
sources than he had been since the day he first entered the 
White House. The armistice released Republicans from any, 
even imaginary, political truce. It released Democrats from 
that unwilling support that a party gives to a president whom 
its chiefs do not like. All presidents steadily lose in power 

•The New York Times economic survey, January 5, 1910. 



300 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

as their second term draws to a close. It is but human 
nature. Pohticians, like lords and nobles, face the rising, 
not the declining, sun. Only there was no rising sun in the 
Democratic party in 1918-19. Moreover, that rich and 
roistering America of 1912 had had enough of reforms, or re- 
straints of business, of endless preachments about unselfish 
ideals and worlds made safe for democracy. A much richer 
America was now breaking those social leading strings which 
Wilson had managed to fasten about it. 

Although Wilson was the foremost statesman of the world, 
although every important spokesman of the greater allied 
powers had agreed that his programme should be their 
programme at the peace table, he was the weakest man in 
Paris, except as the champion of inarticulate mankind and as 
the monitor of men's consciences. Wilson's party in Wash- 
ington followed him unwillingly; the opposing party was 
literally panting to rend him asunder; and the great agencies 
of publicity were now beyond his control.^ The wealth of 
America, the foodstuffs and the credits to buy clothing, were 
nominally at his command. He might ask Congress to vote 
billions to aid stricken Europe; he might call upon generous 
people to give to the Red Cross; and he might threaten a re- 
fusal of coal and oil so needful for European industry. 
Therein lay what real power he had. His great name and his 
moral leadership were about all else that he had. This he 
knew, if he did not avow. A selfish statesman would have 
remained in Washington during the winter of 1919 and mended 
his "broken fences," leaving the peace of the world to be 
mended by those who had broken it. 

On the other hand, Georges Clemenceau, his greatest op- 
ponent in the absence of a German delegation, had been in 
oflBce only a year. He had saved France from the very jaws 

II am not uaaware of tbe teisuK of the cables^ the preceding November. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 301 

of death. He represented in his own person all the romance 
of the long struggle of France against despotic Germany 
since the terrible Franco-German Treaty of 1871. He had 
signed the beautiful and tragic protest of France against the 
rape of Alsace-Lorraine. He had fought alongside the great 
Gambetta; he had resisted, as prime minister, the encroach- 
ments of Germany in the touchy Morocco days; and he had 
edited for years his famous journal, Uhomme libre, the Free 
Man; and when that was subjected to the censorship, he 
changed the name to L'homme enchaini, the Man in Chains. 
He had been a sort of "Prometheus Bound" in France till 
the great crisis of the war of 1917-18 called him to high 
office. He it was who had never said peace, had never 
breathed a thought of discouragement, who had ever said, 
"war, war, war to the last man."^ 

From the day Clemenceau entered office, against the 
wishes of the President of France, against the outcries of 
the moderate press and all the socialists, his career had been 
one unprecedented success, a series of triumphs. He went 
almost daily to the front during the darkest days of 1918; 
he held men firmly to their tasks; he united France; he put 
into prison the famous statesman and world financier, Joseph 
Caillaux; he banished the former cabinet member, Malvy ; and 
he put to death the notorious German spy, Bolo Pasha.- 
Most important of all, in May, 1918, when the German guns 
were thundering at the very gates of Amiens and a strike of 
400,000 munitions and other workers in and about Paris 
threatened the very existence of France, it was Clemenceau 
who persuaded the workers to go back to their tasks and main- 



>The best and most recent biography of Georges Clemenceau in English is that by H. M. 
Hyndman, New York, 1919. 

'The Springfield Republican, Ociohet 30, 1919, gives a good brief account of these prosecu- 
tioof. 



302 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

tained an undaunted front. Few were permitted to know of 
the gravity of the situation; those who did know believed 
the "Tiger" had saved the alhed cause.^ Thus, when the ar- 
mistice was signed, no general of France took precedence 
over the premier. The French senate, in which there were 
life-long enemies, and the Deputies, where the socialist 
bloc had, even when his cause was the country's cause, never 
lent him a vote, gave him an ovation upon the announcement 
of victory such as no other French statesman had received 
since those inexplicable demonstrations that had been show- 
ered upon the worthless third Napoleon. He broke under 
the excitement and shed tears like a boy. He reminded men 
in his old age of Gambetta in the prime of manhood. Fifty 
years he had fought, but never prayed for the day he then 
saw. It was dramatic; it was French; and Clemenceau was 
French in every fibre. 

Cynical, witty, informed upon every subject that a states- 
man should know, experienced in the great, cruel world, dis- 
illusioned of his early faith in socialism, doubtful of men's 
motives, faithful to facts and only facts, Georges Clemenceau 
was a second Bismarck, standing where the first Bismarck 
stood in 1871, only on the French side of the arena. True to 
himself, at the very climax of Wilson's reception in England, 
he went before the French Deputies and asked a vote of con- 
fidence in favour of the old diplomacy, the old balance of 
power and sharp political bargaining. He swore eternal 
enmity to everything German; he vowed anew that France 
should have her reparation, that no illusions of a better world 
order, no league of nations should swerve him an inch from 
his course. Armaments, legions, military training, an- 
nexations, and indemnities were his weapons. It was again 
"blood and iron." Trulv Bismarck was not dead. 



'See a remarkable article in the Sunej for May 10, 1919. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 303 

And France stood in sore need of all that he asked. Her 
total wealth at the beginning of the great war was hardly 
$50,000,000,000. Her industries were greatly diversified, 
agriculture being the most important. Her mines and her 
industries lay mainly in the region bordering on Germany and 
Belgium, Paris and Lyons being the principal exceptions. 
Now that the war was over, agriculture was half ruined; the 
great foreign w ine trade was almost destroyed — in part by the 
war, in part by the changing habits of Americans; coal mines 
had been ruined by invading armies; and the machinery of the 
industrial belt had been either destroyed by the Germans 
or carried beyond the Rhine to strengthen the hands of their 
enemies. A great stretch of the country was a barren waste. 
Economists estimated that France had suffered a loss of 
$40,000,000,000. Of course this estimate was in the money 
of 1919. The debt of France was hardly less than 
$25,000,000,000. Annual expenditures were $2,000,000,000. 
The people were unwilling or unable to pay a seventh part 
of the annual burden in taxes, and imports exceeded exports 
by $2,000,000,000 a year! Moreover, the French people 
were about to lose the loan of $7,500,000,000 they had made 
to Russia before the great war! The whole business of the 
country was upon a paper basis; and France owed the United 
States $2,500,000,000, the very continuance of her food and 
fuel supplies depending upon the United States and England.^ 
Discouraging as this state of things was, Clemenceau stood 
out boldly for his country. He knew that matters had been 
infinitely worse more than once before in French history, 
while now at last the "hereditary enemy" lay prostrate be- 
fore him and Alsace-Lorraine was ready for the taking. Nor 
was there doubt in his mind that the French border should be 



"The "American Yearbook," 1918, pp. 151, 38t; an excellent it distressing? article on the 
economic state of Europe will be found in the Cotileiiporary Review, September, 1919. 



304 WOO0ROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

moved to the Rhine from Strasbourg to Cologne. The dream 
of a thousand years should be realized. The champion of anti- 
clericalism, of republicanism as against socialism, of nation- 
alism of the most ardent type, France was his god and pa- 
triotism his creed. He was the greatest pagan of his country 
and his time; and he looked upon the Germans quite as the 
good Emperor Hadrian had looked upon their ancestors 
eighteen hundred years before, as crafty barbarians. Thus 
Wilson*s one great opponent, antithesis even, was the man 
who had saved France, the Frenchman who was daily grow- 
ing in strength and prestige with his countrymen, mounting 
to a place in the affections of Frenchmen not unlike that of 
Napoleon I. Clemenceau, the realist, trained in the lan- 
guages of Europe, in the harsh and cruel philosophy of the 
continent, without mercy for his enemies and without respect 
for English-American liberalism, would meet the President 
and endeavour to v'anquish him.^ 

As between Wilson with his country officially against him, 
and Clemenceau with his star still rising, Lloyd George of 
England would be the umpire, although I am not unaware 
of the importance of Italy and Japan. But critical and im- 
portant as were the demands of these two powers, they and 
their cases were but pawns for the French premier. France, 
Italy, and Japan were all in the same class; they represented 
the old diplomacy, the old cruel Machtpolitik of Bismarck. 
Lloyd George was perforce the umpire. And Lloyd George 
was and is a sijrange combination of liberalism and reaction, 
as deft as Talleyrand and as ready as Cavour. He had 
beaten ervery rival off his trail, had been on every side of every 
great problem of the last decade of English political history, 
had broken down the old-fashioned, frock-coated, easy- 



This picture is, I think, a just one, in spile of the fact that he and President Wilson seem le 
be good personal friends. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 305 

going liberalism of Sir Herbert Asquith and, just as the 
terms of the armistice began to sink satisfactorily into the 
minds of every-day Britishers, he called an election for De- 
cember 14th. He made a campaign that compelled the support 
of all the less alert and the unthinking masses as well as that 
of the old gentry and aristocracy. There was to be no quarter 
for the "Kaiser and. his minions," the last penny of damages 
was to be exacted and the allies of Britain were likewise to 
have their way upon the defeated Central Powers. He was 
not so coldrblooded as Clemenceau, nor so ruthless in declar- 
ing his purposes as Bismarck had been half a century before. 
But he called into play all the hatred of which Englishmen 
were capable and won a victory which gave him an over- 
whelming support in the House of Commons. Asquith 
himself was beaten; Arthur Henderson was left at home, 
while Sir Edward Carson, the knight-errant of Ulster, and 
Bonar Law, the chief of the Unionist party, were placed be- 
side him as the spokesmen of Britain. Out of sixteen woman 
candidates for seats in the House of Commons only one, an 
Irishwoman, was elected. It was one great shout of victory 
and of conservatism that went out to the world from this 
unprecedented election. It was in spirit and result a simi- 
lar election to that which had occurred in the United States a 
little moT^iiiSin a month before, only Lloyd George was the 
beneficiary of the British campaign while Wilson had been 
the loser in the American campaign. 

But England's affairs were not in so promising a condi- 
tion as these appearances might lead one to think. The na- 
tional debt was $50,000,000,000 and the annual budget was 
nearly $12,000,000,000. Taxation was yielding, however, 
nearly $5,000,000,000 a year. England was borrowing 
$3,500,000,000 from the United States which would make 
her debt to the United States $4,000,000,000. The European 



306 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

allies, however, had borrowed from England about 
$8,000,000,000.1 These are unprecedented transactions. 
They show that Britain and America held the purse-strings 
of the world. But of the two powers Britain's outlook was 
far worse than that of her western associate. When the war 
began every great financial transaction was engineered from 
London or the conditions on which it was conducted were 
fixed in London. It had been so for two centuries. It was 
to be so no longer. New York was now the money market, 
the financial dictator. Nor was British trade likely to re- 
coup its losses in a hundred years. It could never again 
be what it had been. Germany had set out to destroy France 
and usurp the economic leadership of Great Britain. The 
result was that France stood in bad stead in January, 1919, 
but likely to recoup somewhat from Germany, while England 
had lost her economic leadership to the United States. 

English thinkers of the silent commercial sort and British 
noblemen of the class of Lord Lansdowne could not look 
upon this state of things with the least degree of allowance; 
and Lloyd George was apt to feel the weight of their influence 
when he went to Paris. But another element had entered 
into the British situation. British labourers were more 
powerful than any other labour group in the world. They 
had the best and sanest leadership. They had published to 
the world a social and economic programme which the Presi- 
dent said was almost as good as his fourteen points. British 
labour, as an organization, had been sadly beaten in the 
election yet British labouring men held the fortunes of Eng- 
land quite as much in their hands as did Lloyd George him- 
self. The coal miners, the railway men, and the longshore- 
men had entered into a combination which was called the 
triple alliance. They meant to compel a readjustment of the 

'"The American Yearbook," 1918, pp. 141-42, 382. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 307 

relations of Labour and Capital, even during the sessions 
of the Peace Conference, in such a way that a measure of 
democracy in industry should be secured. Moreover, British 
labour agitators were not in the habit of throwing bombs 
into helpless crowds or pronouncing the most arbitrary dicta 
of social upheaval, after the manner of the Russian proletariat 
or certain elements of American labour. British labour 
was apt to effect results, even when it was no.t strong in 
Parliament; and British labour had Mr. Wilson for an ally 
because of its sanity. 

Thus the three really great figures sat down to the peace 
table in Paris on January 15, 1919. At the very first one of 
the fourteen points came up for decision. Open covenants 
openly arrived at was a great principle that could not be 
lived up to, much as its acceptance might have aided Wilson 
and his cause. At the very moment the decision was to be 
made, every one of the greater parties to the coming negotia^ 
tions was involved in secret diplomacy. The President, if 
he grasped the world situation as he certainly did grasp it, 
knew that the Japanese would be thrown into a turmoil 
if his purposes in regard to China were made known. Lloyd 
George was already contemplating a wise and revolutionary' 
movement looking toward a pacification of Russia that could 
not be revealed to British newspapers aforetime without de- 
feating the very object aimed at. Every other chief at the table 
was in similar plight in half a dozen matters and committed 
in some things to programmes that could not bear the light 
of publicity. Suppose Wilson, for example, had announced 
his suspected opposition to the growing Italian imperialism! 

Again, if open covenants openly arrived at were made the 
rule, the hundreds of British and American newspaper cor- 
respondents, after the manner of British and American news- 
paper management, would get "scoops" on the news, for 



308 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Italy did not have the wires or even the paper for the trans- 
mission and pubUcation of the news. Japanese newspapers 
could not afford to pay the cost of transmitting the proceed- 
ings of the conference half around the world. Australia 
was in like plight. Open discussions, therefore, meant an 
American-British monopoly of the news. But that was not 
the worst of it. The greater papers of the United States were 
opposed to Wilson's mission altogether, opposed to the four- 
teen points and in sympathy with the social philosophy and 
purposes of Premier Clemenceau rather than those of the 
president of their own country. If every suggestion, every 
remark of every member of the conference were to be made 
in public, as speeches are made in the Parliament of Great 
Britain, the members simply would not have talked and the 
conference would have resolved itself into Quaker conclave. 
The approaches, the suggestions, and the vital understandings 
of the delegations would have been made in some other way. 

Much as open sessions must have advanced the cause of 
democracy, it was hardly possible that Lloyd George, Cle- 
menceau, and Orlando, leading parties to a score of secret 
treaties or understandings in the different crises of the 
war, should then agree to open covenants. The majority 
decided, almost without discussion, against the first of the 
Wilson principles. The President might have defeated the 
decision if he had refused to abide by it. That might have 
been permissible journalism, now and then, in the United 
States. It would have been poor statesmanship at Paris. 
But the President's prestige suffered greatly in the partial 
abandonment of the principle of publicity. 

A second item in Wilson's programme of world readjust- 
ment was already determined against him, the problem of the 
freedom of the seas. That had been a doubtful matter from 
the first. Great Britain is a scattered empire of Britishers, 



^ 1 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 309 

loosely bound together by a sort of racial sympathy. The 
only substantial connecting force is the great navy and its 
consort, the British merchant marine. Since the days of 
Nelson, this navy had patrolled the seas of the world and 
kept the highways of commerce open, especially for the bene- 
fit of England and her system, but also for the rest of the 
world. Germany never at any moment of her great struggle 
denied that the oceans were open to her in time of peace. 
And since such an empire as the British must ever favour a 
policy of partial or absolute free trade, the trade of Germany 
with British colonies had been quite as free as between 
Germany and her own outlying dominions. These are vital 
facts in the case which Wilson could not overlook. 

It was, however, the century-old Jeffersonian principle 
of free trade in time of war that Wilson's second point con- 
templated.^ Free ships make free goods had been the old 
slogan. It had been aimed against the British marine autoc- 
racy of the Napoleonic wars. Prussia had favoured it. 
Russia had favoured it. France, of course, favoured it after 
Trafalgar.^ But the United States changed her attitude 
during the Civil War and as a result came near to a war 
with England in 1862. In the Spanish War freedom of the 
seas was a minor issue. But in both the Civil War and the 
War of 1898 the principle, if not the fact, of an actual 
blockade mitigated the American violation of the principle. 

Wilson's idea in 1918 was to revive free trade upon all the 
seas and to secure universal peace in which navies would rap- 
idly become obsolete. That was what Jefferson, whom Wilson 
would never regard as a godfather to his political children, 

'In spirit, if not in actual phrasing, nearly everything Wilson advocated during the great 
war was preached and urged by the American Revolutionists of 1776 and by Jefferson during 
kis presidency. 

•Louis Martin Sears in American Political Science Review, August, 1919, gives an excellent 
account of Jefferson's ideals iu this great matter. 



310 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

always contended.^ If the league of nations were set up there 
would be no difficulty. But Englishmen, so near the fighting 
front and so frequently threatened with invasion from the 
continent, could not believe in the efficacy of any remedy but 
that which had been applied successfully against Napoleon 
and William II. And before they would agree to the armis- 
tice of November 11th, they compelled the President to aban- 
don or reinterpret the "freedom of the seas." The interpre- 
tation was a yielding of the point. It was made a part of the 
armistice and there was nothing further to do about it. But 
lest Wilson and his supporters in the United States should 
endeavour to reopen that discussion at Paris, Lloyd George 
and practically every other responsible British statesman 
made it clear during the days preceding the assembling of the 
Peace Conference that England would never yield the point. 
It was too much for weak human nature, especially British 
nature. In this the English behaved in quite the same spirit 
that Clemenceau behaved when there was talk of French 
disarmament on the German frontier. iVll of which showed 
that the President alone had any real faith in a league of 
nations.2 

Another problem of equally vital importance, from the 
Wilson point of view, came to discussion quickly. Before 
anything could be taken up for definite settlement some com- 
mon attitude toward Russia must be taken. It was the 
"acid test" and more important than the question of open 
diplomacy. The Spartacans were making headway in Ger- 
many. Lenine had a firm grip upon Russia. Other Euro- 
pean peoples might fall under the new social "illusion." Nei- 
ther reparations nor indemnities would avail if Germany and 

II know Jefferson sometimes weakened in his pacifism. But any understanding of his life 
sustains the view of the text Henry Adams, "History of the United States," I, 146, *t aeq. 
^William Allen Wliite in The Saturday Evening Post, .\ugust 16, 1919. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 311 

Austro-Hungary became another Russia. But should Len- 
ine's spokesmen be seated at Paris? Or should the confer- 
ence endeavour to find a way to give the masses of the Rus- 
sian people a chance? Lloyd George,^ doubtless with 
Wilson's approval, gave it out that the Bolshevist Govern- 
ment might be recognized and its representatives might 
perhaps be accepted.^ Wilson certainly tended in the same 
direction and Colonel House was of the same opinion. That 
would have meant first that the Lenine government would 
at once become less eruptive and gradually settle down to the 
ways of peace and conservatism, as all radical governments 
have done in the past when they became "legitimate." 

Besides, the Russian world would have become a more 
or less close collaborator of British and American statesmen 
in Paris. British and American economic and financial 
leaders would have begun at once to set the distracted and 
undeveloped country to rights. Russia would have become 
another economic bonanza as the Rocky Mountain region 
was to the North after the American Civil War. Wilson, 
Lloyd George, and Lenine, strange as this comment may seem 
to some, would have rearranged the world and written the 
terms of the peace. It was a great dream that came near to 
realization.^ But Clemenceau defeated it. British con- 
servatism reacted in feverish opposition and Lloyd George 
has not yet been willing to confess his far-seeing purpose of 
January, 1919. American conservatism could not for a mo- 
ment rise to such statecraft and Wilson has never intimated 
whether he was, in fact, in sympathy with the Lloyd George 



iNew York Times oi January 13, 1919, contains a rather bitter protest against Lloyd George's 
attitude. 

' The Literary Digest gives American press comment in issues of January 11, 18, and J5, 1919. 

>W. C. Bullitt's story reviewed in The Literary Digest, September 21, 1919, and exploited by 
the Senate Committee on ForeiKn Relations early in September only indicated the directions 
of the political wind in January, 1919. 



S12 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

proposal. To have recognized Lenine in 1919 would have 
been a similar stroke to that of the English of 1815 when they 
made a quiet alliance with Talleyrand at Vienna in order to 
combat the grasping realism of Metternich and his Russian 
and Prussian allies. 

But, as I have said, Clemenceau defeated the purpose. 
He did so with the support of men like Lansdowne of Eng- 
land and the Republican leaders of the United States Senate. 
The outcome was the Wilson proposal of the Prinkipo con- 
ference to which the Bolshevist Government agreed to send 
delegates.^ The other Russian governments refused to meet 
the Bolshevists. One crisis had passed. Far-seeing Liberals 
thus lost a great chance. It was now the business of the 
conference to follow Clemenceau and compel Russia to pay 
its debt to France of many years' standing. Moreover, 
Siberia lay open to Japan and Japan was sending seventy 
thousand troops into Siberia. Japanese statesmen were 
not likely to recall these troops upon a mere resolution of 
the Peace Conference. Japan talked then, as she has ever 
talked, of manifest destiny, of annexations, and of economic 
exploitation. Japan was and is the Prussia of the East. 
If Britain and America refused to deal with Lenine alone 
and the other Russian parties refused to go to Wilson's ren- 
dezvous in the Black Sea, then Wilson and Lloyd George 
must contrive some method of assisting the French to col- 
lect their debt; and all three powers, France, England, 
and the United States, must manage to keep Siberia from 
falling into the hands of Japan. The outcome was the policy 
which now prevails. It has never been avowed. It could 
not be avowed, for that would have challenged Japan; and 
Japan is the only nation in the world that is not sick of war 
and militarism. France sent troops to southern Russia; 

'The Prinkipu conference proved a fiasco. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 313 

England sent troops to northern Russia, and the United 
States was to take care of the Siberian railway.^ A great 
opportunity was suffered to slip. The reason was the ab- 
sence of a sufficiently well-instructed public opinion in Britain 
and America as evidenced in the elections which had taken 
place in the two countries only a few months before. Be- 
sides, Democracy herself would hardly have been wise enough 
to support a wise and liberal policy toward Russia. 

The decision in favour of closed sessions, the failure of the 
free-seas contention, and the lost opportunity of making peace 
with the Bolsheviki were victories for Clemenceau and the 
European point of view. The President had pronounced 
his Christian ideal. But European statesmen are not Chris- 
tians. Wilson, having felt the ground slipping from under 
him since the sudden collapse of imperial Germany, now made 
a resolute stand for item five of his fourteen points. That is, 
for a new treatment of colonial possessions. It was the prin- 
ciple of the Mobile address which Ambassador Page had felt 
constrained to explain before a British audience^ just before 
the great war, the principle that governments everywhere 
must seek the true ends of the peoples of backward countries 
and not their own ends. This involved the Monroe Doctrine ; 
it must be handled with gloves. 

But the German colonies offered a great opportunity. Wil- 
son seized upon it. These colonies were not to be parcelled 
out. They were to be made mandatories under a league 
of nations, a connecting link among the nations, much as the 
common possession of the Mississippi Valley was made the 
binding link of the American states in 1787. The President 
would make a fight for this idea. It was his first great fight 



iThe writer has no other support for this analysis than the n ell-known facts in the case. 
What else can they mean? 
'A. B. Hart. "The Monroe Doctrine," 241, 



314 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

for the league of nations.' He knew his strength. Repub- 
lican opposition at home might not be ralUed against him upon 
this. The Irish and the Germans would support him; and 
all the Liberals everywhere would sustain him. But immedi- 
ately the Australian premier, Hughes, appeared before the 
conference and demanded Germany's South Pacific posses- 
sions. The French Colonial Secretary, Simon, followed 
Hughes and asked on behalf of France for the African Came- 
roons and Togoland, with the privilege of enlisting soldiers 
in the colonies for the exploiting country. That is, Lloyd 
George and Clemenceau spoke through these men in behalf of 
very definite parcels of the earth's surface. Italy stood aloof 
and Japan said nothing; but both Italy and Japan had simi- 
lar objectives. 

The issue was joined. Debates and arguments followed. 
The friendly tone of the French press changed to one of open 
hostility. Lloyd George declared himself for a league of 
nations and for the mandatories, as Wilson named his method, 
but only after the German colonies had been distributed. 
Clemenceau lost patience with Wilson and his "impractical 
ideas," while Premier Hughes conducted a press campaign 
against the President. What was said in confidence in the 
conferences was repeated in the newspapers till Wilson made 
effective protest. After a long struggle the British delega- 
tion yielded and the mandatory principle was adopted.^ It 
was the first victory that Wilson had won, and the result is 
to be found in the league of nations constitution, article 22. 
This victory displeased the Australians. It was rather more 
satisfactory to the Japanese than otherwise; but it convinced 
the more liberal element of British public opinion that some 
kind of a league of nations was assured. From that time 

>Ray Stannard Baker in the Springfield Republican for October 30, 1919. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 315 

Lloyd George and the British pubHc in general tended to 
support Wilson. In the United States Mr. Taft and scores 
of other leaders discussed and urged the league idea upon 
the press and the public. Before the end of February public 
opinion was apparently very largely in favour of this major 
point in Wilson's programme.^ It was an important victory, 
but the fight for it revealed other secret agreements between 
Clemenceau and Lloyd George than those which the Russian 
Bolsheviki had published in November, 1917. Besides, and 
this was the most significant fact of the last days of January, 
it became plain that the British held the decisive vote; and 
British public opinion, being more mobile than that of the 
United States, was Wilson's decisive asset. Having lost his 
election in the preceding November, he might now win 
his world programme through the support of British liberal- 
ism. Wilson became more popular in England than Lloyd 
George. That was an advance, but whatever Wilson may 
have hoped to do on behalf of the Irish was in part lost. The 
Irish had set up their revolutionary Sinn Fein Government 
and challenged both England and the Peace Conference. 

On the other hand, the German elections which came at 
the close of the first deadlock of the conference gave the 
world assurance that what is called democracy, and not social- 
ism, was to be the creed of the new republic. Overwhelming 
majorities sustained the moderate plan for a national assem- 
bly and the continuance of the influence of what is called 
"middle-class morality." In fact, Ebert and his regime in 
Germany were but German editions of the progressivism 
of Wilson. The world rested easy. The conference itself 
settled down to work as though it would continue and have its 
arrangements accepted at the end. 



iNewspaper polls showed %'ery widespread popularity of the idea in January and February, 
1919. 



316 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

But if Wilson were to succeed with his "impractical no- 
tions" he must himself take the helm. He had shown in the 
struggle about the German colonies that "skin-deep Amer- 
ican Christianity" was perhaps a match for the paganism 
of Paris. Already Wilson had insisted that the adoption of a 
league constitution, applying his fourteen points in so far as 
that was possible, would provide solutions for many problems. 
A commission for drafting the constitution of a league of 
nations had been appointed. Wilson was its chairman. Lord 
Robert Cecil and General Smuts of England were its next most 
important members. Leon Bourgeois of France and Premier 
Orlando of Italy were other members. But if there was to be 
a league, Wilson and his British friends must shape it. Upon 
Britain and the United States alone depended its success. 
As early as August, 1915, Wilson had said to personal friends 
that the war must not end without a league which should out- 
law war. The idea grew upon him. He lent his aid to the 
campaign which the American League to Enforce Peace was 
making. And when he went to Paris, it was everywhere un- 
derstood that he would urge some scheme of a world-federa- 
tion. It was, in fact, the great reason behind his whole war 
programme. Without the hope of this realization he would 
not have gone to Europe. "^ 

He worked day and night with his group. They formu- 
lated a plan early in February. It was the first and better 
draft which appeared in print later in the month. It was 
general in terms. Its aim was disarmament, cooperation 
of the great nations in a general council to sit continuously, 
and cooperation of all the peoples of the world in a larger 
assembly which should gather at stated times for the discus- 
sion of subjects vital to the peace of the world. And there 



»Willi:inj Allen White in The Saturday Evening Post, August 16, 1919, says ihut the league 
would not have b«en mentioned there but for his insLitence. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 317 

was to be a definite system of control and guidance of the 
undeveloped peoples, a system whereby the more enterpris- 
ing nations and their citizens might develop natural resources 
without coming into constant conflict with suspicious natives, 
and without beginning rivalries that might lead to wars be- 
tween the great nations. The outline was simple. It gave 
no country an undue advantage, except the English who al- 
ready held in undisputed control great peoples and vast 
spaces of the world like India and Egypt. But no one could 
have expected that Great Britain would give up such pos- 
sessions any more than it could have been expected that the 
United States would give up Texas or New Mexico.^ 

It was certainly a beginning. Wilson insisted that the 
league should be made a part of the treaty. That looked 
radical indeed to men who had but yesterday acknowledged 
the need of any league at all. Resistance followed. But 
before the middle of February it was evident to everyone 
that the members of the conference could not agree upon 
any treaty at all without some such organization as the league 
contemplated. France demanded a Rhine confederation 
which should be carved out of West Prussia. It should be a 
satellite of the French Government. Moreover, France must 
have the Saar Valley in fee simple in addition to Alsace- 
Lorraine. Of course the reparations were not to be over- 
looked. But Lloyd George and the British, although they 
might have agreed in 1915 to the secret treaty with Russia 
looking to this end, were now opposed. General Foch and 
all the military men insisted that nothing less than a Rhine 
frontier would insure peace. They talked like Napo- 
leon I, as all military men are wont to do. Lloyd George's 
enemy. Lord NorthclifiFe and his syndicate of newspapers, 

•The Yale Review for September, 1919, contabs an able review of the inception and growth of 
the league idea in Parii by Charles Seymour. 



318 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

took the French point of view. Northdiffe occupied a resi- 
dence in Versailles to be close to the British delegation at all 
times. The British premier was in a fair way to be over- 
thrown. The situation was critical even in mid-February. 

In Italy an equally critical situation developed. Baron Son- 
nino and Senor Orlando, the governing voices in Rome, were 
inclined to be moderate expansionists in view of the economic 
condition of Italy, as well as in remembrance of the history 
of the war. There was a party of ardent imperialists in Italy, 
as there is in the United States. Italy is overpopulated 
as it has been for hundreds of years. The imperialists de- 
sired to save the loss of millions of emigrants by securing 
lands for them in the near East, anywhere in the Mediterran- 
ean basin. At the same time they insisted that the future 
was destined to be warlike as, indeed, the past had been, 
and hence they must annex the mountainous coasts of the 
eastern Adriatic, seize and fortify every harbour from Venice 
to Cattaro if not to Corfu, and make of the ancient sea an 
Itahan lake, as the British had done with the greater Mediter- 
ranean in the eighteenth century. It was a magnificent plan. 
The armistice had already weakened the Wilson doctrine of 
the self-determination of peoples in recognizing Italian sov- 
ereignty over Austrians in Tyrol and over Slavs about 
Trieste. Why might not the whole Wilson programme be 
scrapped? 

This idea appealed to a powerful member of the Italian 
parliament, Giolitti . This able leader had before the German 
war exercised a controlling influence in Italian politics and 
finance. He had been the constant supporter of the German 
influence in Italy. During the war he was associated with 
the defeatists and on more than one occasion threatened to 
change the course of Italian history. His theory was that 
the Allies would be defeated, that Italy would suffer in con- 



THE DAY OF BECKONING 319 

sequence, and finally that through neutrality alone the coun- 
try could prosper and increase its power in the world. When 
the war came suddenly to an end and Austria, the enemy of 
a thousand years, broke into pieces, he found the Govern- 
ment still moderate. Orlando was, in fact, a partial sup- 
porter of the Wilson ideal and by no means certain that he 
should ask more than had been assured in the armistice. 

The opportunity was too great. Giolitti made a complete 
political somersault. He organized a movement looking 
to the annexation of the whole Dalmatian coast. Fiume 
was the least that could be asked. The militarists joined 
him. The so-called strategists of the navy were delighted. 
The jingoists of the type of d'Annunzio aided the Giolitti j 
group. Suddenly a powerful opposition appeared in Parlia- 
ment. The moderate Government was attacked for its 
failure to seize the great moment in Italian history. This 
movement was going on while Wilson was pressing his 
league idea. It was not completed until early in April. ^ 

But Clemenceau could no more allow an imperialist Italy 
to seize all the strategic points on the Adriatic and subject 
Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, and the Jugo-Slavs to 
her will than he could assent to the return of the Saar Valley 
to Germany. Imperialism is a game that any one with an 
army and a navy can play. France hardly knew how to 
thwart Italy without a breach which would play at once into 
Wilson's hands. Clemenceau began to think of the league 
of nations. It might, after all, serve some purpose. 

AVhile Italy prepared, despite her appalling economic de- 
pendence, to play the great game, Polish statesmen laid out a 
state which was to stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea 
and which was to absorb Danzig and large areas of settled 

'C. E. Merriam, "Italian Politics and Parties," Chapter VII, a Ixxik not yet published, 
kindly loaned to the nriter. 



320 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

non-Polish territory. Ancient Poland was to be re-erected 
and the maintenance of the peace of the Baltic region was 
to be her peculiar mission. Clemenceau, like the leaders of 
France in the seventeenth century, thought that a good 
scheme to keep Germany busy on that frontier. Here again 
was a problem and a solution that would have been but the 
beginning of another war. If Italy was to be the mistress of 
the new Balkan ensemble and Poland the manager of a simi- 
lar tragedy on the frontiers of old Russia what were the bene- 
ficial results of the war? Simply the absence of German 
imperialism? 

Really, the commissions of the conference which set about 
remaking the map of Europe while Wilson worked upon the 
league constitution were not making the headway that simple, 
old-fashioned diplomats had expected. There was no other 
way but that of the "simple Mr. Wilson" as Clemenceau was 
wont to say. It was therefore agreed with some misgivings 
that there should be a league, that the league should be a 
part of the treaty itself, and the first outline of its principal 
clauses was formally proclaimed to the world. ^ Thus the 
complex and pressing difficulties of prostrate Europe were 
to be put in a way of settlement. British Liberals and the 
American President were about to find a way forward, in 
spite of the handicaps. As Wilson took ship for Washington 
to sign a score of bills that required his presence and to per- 
suade a recalcitrant congress that the world expected great 
things of it, Europe experienced a second warming to the 
"impracticable man from America." 

But as the European statesmen began to settle down to ac- 
ceptance of the Wilson ideal, at least in a measure, the wish 
on their part to have the United States assume the greater 



iWilliam Allen White eives a good account of this part of the negotiations in The Saturday 
Eiejiing Po,< August 16. 1919. Andre TaHieu. "The Tnith About the Treaty," 1921, is 
the most important book on its subject. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 321 

part of the allied debt incurred in the war against Germany 
took rather definite form. If there was to be a world league 
and victorious nations were to be denied the spoils of war, 
then the league should take over the international debt, the 
United States bearing a disproportionate part because of her 
immense riches and her late entrance into the struggle. 
Wilson might have his league and a new world order might 
be set up, if the United States would consent to this.^ 

It was not a wholly unreasonable proposition. It showed, 
moreover, that European statesmen had read American his- 
tory. The new world-state, if it were to be set up as Wilson 
and his liberal-radical friends wished, should, like the Federal 
Government of 1789, take over the debt which had been in- 
curred in preparing the way for it. The amazing point was 
that sensible men, who knew the United States, should sup- 
pose that Wilson could bring about the adoption of such a plan 
in a single state of the American Union. Wilson's victory, 
as he was about to set out for America, threatened to be 
too complete. Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando, if 
they were to enter a new world federation, would go all the 
way and ask the President to go with them. 

Wilson returned by way of Boston and there gave voice to 
his zeal and enthusiasm for the league. The outlook seemed 
good. But he was only running into a new hornets' nest. 
The success of his league with British approval only gave 
the million or more of Germans and German sympathizers 
in the United States an issue. They could not denounce 
the armistice. They could not oppose the President as such 



>A personal letter of January 8, 1919, from one of the American commissioners reads: "It is 
common to hear (hat the United States should not only cancel the AUies debts, but that we should 
go back to August 1,1914, and share the debts that England, France, and Italy have piled up in 
order to defeat Germany. The suggestions go even further in that they ask chat the debts 
be apportioned according to the resources of each nation and that an allowance should be made 
lor the loss of man power." 



322 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WOR;K 

without risk. They could attack any specific idea, the more 
if it forced a secondary role upon Germany. Germans who 
had shouted for Wilson as he talked in France and in England 
about the new day, the day of peoples as against govern- 
ments, now turned overnight from enthusiastic supporters 
to violent opponents.^ 

The fact that^ British statesmen favoured the league and 
the additional fact that Wilson had not of his own strength 
ordered the demolition of the Grand Fleet, and thereby vi- 
olated the terms of the armistice was argument enough for 
another milUon Irishmen to desert the President whom most 
of them had voted for in 1916. Whatever England favoured 
was to be opposed by Irish leaders and Irish churchmen of 
high rank. A great congress of Irish societies was arranged 
to meet in Philadelphia, in Independence Hall, while Wilson 
was in Washington. It was intended to endorse Irish in- 
dependence and then a delegation was to be sent to warn the 
President against his course. What a world we live in ! The 
Germans had defeated the campaign of Mr. Hughes by shout- 
ing and voting for him. The Irish had done much to elect 
Mr. Wilson by the same course. Now both Germans and 
Irish proposed to defeat any league of nations and any settle- 
ment of Europe that left British power and British prestige 
unbroken. With whom might Wilson work out a solution? 
Clemenceau? That could not be. With the new German 
leaders? No American chieftain could endure the odium of 
such an alliance. With English statesmen? Then he must lose 
a large part of the strength the last election had left him! 

With all this plainly before him in every newspaper, the 
President went on to Washington. There he met a group of 
the leaders of Congress. They proved intr-actable, irreconcil- 

>Any examination of the German papers will show this. The author knows a score of peopU 
wbo made the sudden change. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 323 

able. Senator Lodge talked Irish. Senator Johnson talked 
Irish. Penrose of Pennsylvania supported Lodge and John- 
son, two strange bedfellows. Democrats were bothered about 
the Irish. A cabinet officer was reported to have said that 
he dared not make a speech in a northern city. It was the 
Irish. The great Irish meeting in Philadelphia, blessed by 
a cardinal and approved by archbishops, held high language, 
passed resolutions for Irish independence^ and appointed 
a delegation, led by a former Democratic governor, by an 
Irish labour spokesman, and by a justice of a state supreme 
court who had trod very near the edge of treason to the 
United States at a critical moment of the war. While Wilson 
argued in the White House with senators and representatives 
on behalf of the league of nations, these influential delegates 
of a great segment of the American nation asked a hearing. 
They were refused. They showed an angry temper and al- 
most demanded a hearing. It was granted them in New 
York the evening before the President sailed the second time 
for Paris, the evening of March 4th. 

Justice Cohalan, Wilson would not see. But two of the 
delegates of the Irish Americans followed the President to 
Paris, obtained permission to visit Ireland, there fraternized 
with the extremists of the Sinn Fein party, made speeches 
and protests until the British Liberals lost all patience and 
the British Government refused to hear the returning Ameri- 
cans when they reached Paris a second time. They did see 
the President a second time, learned from him what any one 
must have known already, that the Irish cause was more 
hopeless then than it had been at any time since the war 
closed. How could Wilson intercede for the Irish when the 
Irish made their case the only case in the world, when their 
leaders proposed to compel the world to wait upon them, 

«As the Czecho-SIovaks had done July 9, 1918; see ante, p. 278. 



334 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and even to precipitate another war if they did not get ex- 
actly what they asked, including the subjection of Protestant 
Ulster to the will of Catholic Ireland? In the midst of this 
stirring excitement, the Senate of the United States showed 
the metal of which its members were made by the adoption 
of a resolution calling upon the President to press the cause 
of Ireland before the Peace Conference. John Sharp Williams 
was the only senator who had the independence to oppose 
this unprecedented attempt of that body to queer the rela- 
tions of the country with the most friendly nation in the world. 

These are some of the complications that Wilson found in 
his own country when he submitted the first draft of the 
league of nations. It was, as I have said, a document of the 
greatest simplicity. It outlined in general, rather than in 
specific, terms the plan of future international cooperation. 
It did not mention the Monroe Doctrine. It omitted all 
reference to the Japanese demand for racial equality. Im- 
mediately the leaders of the Senate demanded the incorpora- 
tion of a statement specially excepting the Monroe Doctrine 
from any jurisdiction or even discussion in the proposed 
league assembly or council. They asked, further, that the 
United States should be granted leave to withdraw from the 
league upon the giving of notice. And Senator Knox, form- 
erly Secretary of State in the Taft Administration, began his 
onslaughts upon the league as an agency of future wars, as 
a plan for the abandonment of every sovereign power of the 
United States and the wilful flaunting of all the sacred teach- 
ings of Washington. Mr. Taft was so impressed by the 
vigour of the opposition that he cabled the President at the 
critical moment urging him to acquiesce in certain proposed 
amendments.^ 

It was the United States that now came to the fore and the 



'New York Times, April 2, 1910. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 825 

very leaders in the United States who had attacked Wilson 
most violently because he went slowly into the war were now 
the men who would employ every possible weapon to anger 
the British, weaken the President, and postpone the pacifica- 
tion of the world. Yet one need not express surprise. It 
was human nature, human nature in a rather aggravated 
form. The groups of the country were not united.^ This 
dis-unity now expressed itself, because it might do so with- 
out appearance of disloyalty. And there was the deep- 
seated party issue. Republican leaders, accustomed to 
occupy the seats of responsibility, could not, even in a grave 
crisis, recognize inwardly the fact that they were not in con- 
trol of affairs. 

But the object of the President's return to Washington 
was to sign the great appropriation bills that were to be 
passed during the last days of the session of Congress, to hold 
conference with Cabinet and other oflScials upon the state of 
the country, and to seek to apply remedies to things that 
needed remedies or avert ills that might be averted. WTiat 
happened? A group of senators who had stood well with the 
nation for many years, men who had supported Mr. Taft in 
the stormy days of 1912, and other men who had sung "On- 
ward Christian Soldiers" with Roosevelt in the Progressive 
convention, now united to thwart the President at every 
turn. Two years before these same leaders had been out- 
raged at the conduct of Senator La FoUette and his "wilful" 
colleagues because they defeated the war purposes of the 
country in a spectacular filibuster. Now, three senators, led 
by Sherman of Illinois, with the consent of Lodge and Johnson, 
themselves aspirants to the presidency, filibustered to death 
all the great appropriation bills. The railway administra- 
tion bill, appropriating more than half a billion dollars, a great 

'The "melting pot" had not done its work. 



326 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

education measure which had the approval of all sections of 
the country, and the general supplies bill were all alike de- 
feated while the President waited in the capitol to sign the 
needed laws and thus keep the wheels of government going in 
accordance with immemorial custom. This happened in a 
senate nominally Democratic and friendly. What might not 
happen when the next Congress assembled? Men denounced 
Wilson because he had gone away from Washington. Men of 
influence and power all over the East declared that he had de- 
serted his post of duty. Now, when he had returned and 
waited to do his duty, three members of the Senate took 
away every chance of his doing it; and influential men in 
the industrial centres of the North approved. 

Nor had these unexpected events been without effect in 
Paris and London. The men at the Peace Conference who 
still wished a peace without the assistance of the United 
States, save in the capacity of Santa Claus, took a new cue 
from the American dispatches. Their conversion to the 
principle of international good will, as indicated in the accept- 
ance of the league of nations idea, had not been very thorough. 
Wilson knew the changing tone. But he set out once again, 
as I have already indicated, for Paris, without calling Con- 
gress in extra session, there to resume his lone battle for his 
ideals. In his address before a great audience in New York 
he showed no signs of the distress under which he laboured. 
Ex-President Taft generously spoke from the same platform. 
He, too, urged the adoption of a constitution for a league of 
nations as the only possible conclusion to the great war. The 
former president risked much with his party associates who 
were then on their way home to renew their attacks upon the 
President and all his works. ^ 



>The New York Timea of March 5, 1919, gives an account of the meeting and the text of 
Wilton's address. 



THE DAY OF RECKONING 327 

Wilson said that he would not come back "till it was all 
over over there," playing upon a popular war song of the 
day. He urged that it was not a party issue that he was 
pressing, that the peoples of Europe were in extreme need of 
peace, that he could not account for the ignorance of world 
affairs shown by his leading opponents; and he besought men 
to think of the future, of the ages to come, not the exigencies 
of the hour. He closed with an optimistic note. He ex- 
pected that, in spite of all, the conference would rise to its 
high obligation and set the world upon a better way and 
that Americans would yet repent their bitter opposition to 
the league idea. There was ample time to think as the 
George Washington returned him to the scene of conflict in 
Paris. Should he yet win a just peace and a promising league 
of nations .f^ 



CHAPTER XV 
THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 

WHEN Wilson returned to Paris a second time, March 
13, 1919, he found that under the leadership of Clemenceau 
the league of nations and the proposed treaty, as agreed upon 
January 25th and confirmed February 14th, had been sepa- 
rated.^ The news from Washington greatly influenced the 
members of the conference. Certainly they endeavoured once 
more to write a treaty in which enormous indemnities and the 
Rhine boundary should be secured to France, in which Italy 
was to have her way in the Adriatic, and Japan was to have 
the German islands in the northern Pacific and the Chinese 
province of Shantung. No one talked seriously of a league of 
nations. Wilson was thought to be a defeated man, even 
Mr. Arthur J. Balfour and the other British leaders had ap- 
parently deserted the President. ^ It was to be a quick agree- 
ment now upon a "strong" peace, a resolute attitude toward 
Russia, and a prompt return to business as usual. The four- 
teen points were to be "scrapped," not even the terms of 
the armistice serving as a restraint. 

How foolish, then, must have appeared the talk of the 
President on the night of his departure from New York! 
He had said to the Senate leaders and to the country that 
the league and the treaty should be so interwoven that they 
could not be disentangled. He had said as much in New 

^William Allen White, in The Saturday Evening Post, August 16, 1919, "Hearings," Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations, 66th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. i, p. 1231. 
'Ray Stannard Baker in Springfield Republican, November 6, 1919. 

328 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 329 

York in September, 1918. And the conference had agreed on 
two occasions that this should be done. On the day of his 
arrival in Paris no one seemed to take him seriously when he 
talked as if there was still no doubt on the point. The Euro- 
peans had not taken the measure of the President. As I have 
shown already in these pages, European statesmen had never 
taken him seriously, except when it proved absolutely neces- 
sary to gain his support or lose the war. 

Wilson was the only eminent man in the world who really 
thought that the principles on which the United States 
entered the war were to be incorporated in the terms of 
the peace. Yet people blamed him for playing a lone 
hand! But on March 17th he published a statement in 
the French papers that there must be a league of na- 
tions and that it must be an integral part of the treaty. 
It set all Paris agog. Upon what real power could the 
President rest any such pretensions as that short announce- 
ment assumed? Wilson had at that time three sources 
of influence in the world: he could refuse, as President 
of the United States, to accept the treaty when finished; he 
could cease approving the grants of hundreds of millions 
of credit to European governments; and he could announce 
that, in his opinion, the moral forces of the world should not 
approve the proposed settlement. 

But as President the majority of Congress was against him, 
and to have taken the first course would have challenged the 
very elements in American life most hostile to him and which 
had prevailed in the last election. If he took the second 
course and refused to lend credits, on which American exports 
were sent abroad, he would have practically laid an embargo 
upon American trade. For without the support of the 
United States the credit of both France and Italy, to say 
nothing of the smaller countries, would have collapsed. 



330 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

The effect of such a course would have been terrible both at 
home and abroad. It would have brought that universal 
panic which so many business men and economists were 
predicting every day .^ The third course was the only one left. 
How much moral strength Wilson had one may never say. 
But it was even at that late hour very great. Only it could 
not be tested with safety, for so long as his actual programme 
remained unpublished, great numbers of Germans in the 
United States might sustain him, similar numbers of Irish 
voters would shout for him, and that body of British opinion 
which Lloyd George had flaunted in the last campaign 
would look to him as its spokesman. Even to try to win a 
great struggle without the legislative support of his own 
country, when many of the other elements of support were 
intangible and when British liberalism was discredited, 
was boldness that approached rashness. And yet timidity 
was the charge of the American Liberals ! 

But Wilson has another source of strength. His personal 
presence, his unparalleled power of persuasion, his voice make 
him a force in any group, I was about to say the dominant 
force in any group of men. Few men, not already hardened 
partisans, who have come into close relation with him have 
been able to resist his appeals. Although the one master 
of the conference after Wilson, Clemenceau, could not be 
touched by these influences, the British felt them keenly. 
Lloyd George and Lord Robert Cecil, if not Mr. Balfour, made 
certain proof of this every day they worked with him. And 
it was, after all, the attitude of the British delegation which 
determined Wilson's success and even prevented the break-up 
of the conference without a treaty or a league.^ 

•Harold G. Moulton in Yale Revieic, October, 1919, and in many other publications during 
the wi«ter and spring of 1919. 

•This vie* resta upon an examination of all the available'evidence rather than upon »pecifi« 
piooL 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 331 

On March 18th, Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George were 
in serious conference. There can be little doubt what the 
President said. Clemenceau's contention was doubtless 
what it had ever been : indemnities that would bind Germany 
for 'a hundred years, five hundred years, Stephan Lauzanne 
suggests in the North American Revieiv,^ and the coveted 
Rhine frontier. Lloyd George must bring the two together. 
For a week there was deadlock. On March 26th, it was an- 
nounced that there would be a league of nations. That much 
Clemenceau would yield. And it might be a part of the 
treaty. Only Wilson must agree to an American-British- 
French alliance against Germany. That is, the conference 
got back to the point where it had been on January 25th !' If 
France must content herself with Alsace-Lorraine and mere 
reparations, then the critical economic situation must not be 
made worse by any recognition or relief of Russian radicalism 
which did not secure the repayment of the seven billions of 
loans to the old imperial regime. Nor would Clemenceau 
ever consent to a clause in the treaty or the league which al- 
lowed Austria to unite with Germany. 

Wilson could hardly consent to any repressive measures in 
Russia. How could foreign powers compel the Bolshevists 
to pay the debts of Nicholas and his predecessors.'' And 
what could Wilson say if the idea of the self-determination of 
peoples were brought to naught in the fixing of a decree 
against the union of groups of the same nationality such as 
Grermany and Austria.? It was Wilson versus Clemenceau, 
with Italy on the side of Clemenceau, and Lloyd George wav- 
ering. The subject of German indemnities disturbed him. 

Everybody who read the dispatches realized that the 
crisis was at its worst and that a break-up of the conference 



'November. 1919. 

«The New York Times, March 27, 1919. 



332 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

was not at all unlikely. To compel Wilson to yield, a vig- 
orous campaign was waged from the very day he embarked 
from New York. From the United States came the news 
that Mr. Bryan insisted upon an amendment to the proposed 
league exempting the Monroe Doctrine.^ Before the end of 
March Wilson knew that Messrs. Root and Taft would favour 
and ask the same thing.^ Cardinal Gibbons, hitherto counted 
as friendly to the President, announced on April 5th, when all 
the world knew that Wilson was ill and in bed, that he was 
opposed to the league and that he, too, would have the treaty 
hastened. The most casual reading of the American news- 
papers during the latter part of March and the early days of 
April will disclose the fact that a wide-flung campaign 
against the league and for a "hard peace" was being con- 
ducted. The leaders of the Republican party were doing 
their utmost as must have been expected.^ Unquestioned 
success of Wilson at Paris would have been the ruin of their 
party for a decade to come. 

If Wilson asked Clemenceau to amend the league covenant, 
it would be the first step in the conclusion of a treaty that 
would violate many if not most of the fourteen points, for if 
he were compelled to ask for a great American concession 
how could he refuse Clemenceau his demand? But the 
Boston Transcript announced that the fourteen points had 
been repudiated in the November elections. Even the New 
York Times, a steady support hitherto, began to say "hurry 
the treaty." The "backfire" from home was certainly both 
rapid and severe as the final decision approached. Wilson's 
first statement upon reaching Paris had been that the league 



'The New York Times, March 12, 1919. It is not suggested that Bryan was influenced by 
the pr(«s campaign. 
*lbid., April ind. 
*Vh4 Littrary Digeit, April 12th, shows the nature of the critir^-sm. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 333 

constitution would not be amended,' a statement that 
probably did as much harm as good. 

Nor was the campaign in Europe less intense. The 
attitude of the Irish was well expressed in a pronouncement 
made in Paris on March 10th, by John T. O'Kelley, the Sinn 
Fein envoy: "We have pleaded and spoken gently to 
President Wilson long enough. The time has come for acts. 
We can stop ratification of this league of nations in Congress 
if the Irish question is not settled."^ By settlement was 
meant absolute independence. The British opposition was 
indicated by the London Daily Express, the Globe, the Pall 
Mall Gazette, the Saturday Review, and the vitriolic Morn- 
ing Post, not to mention the Northcliffe papers, already bent 
on the overthrow of Lloyd George.^ The London Globe called 
Wilson's attitude " autocracy." The Daily Express lamented 
his stubbornness. The Pall Mall Gazette said that he simply 
did not know the mischief he was doing. The Northcliffe 
papers attacked Lloyd George because he did not support with 
sufficient vigour the French demands for the Rhine frontier. 
The whole conservative element in parliament seemed to 
unite in a campaign to overthrow the prime minister, an 
event which might have caused a break-up of the Peace Con- 
ference. And Christabel Pankhurst, the suffragist leader, 
declared in a wildly applauded speech in London that Wilson 
and Lloyd George were the villains of Paris, they were the 
shields of Bolshevism. 

In Paris the pressure was more direct and at the same time 
more subtle. When Colonel House undertook to prepare 
the way for the Monroe Doctrine, as an amendment to the 
league, the British helped him on by ready agreement. This 



»The New York Timet, March 16, 1919. 

'/6(W., March 10th. 

>Ibil., March 18th to April 10th, gives the best reflex of London opbio*. 



384 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

was on April 20th. The next day the Swiss tried in a meeting 
of the neutrals gathered in Paris to mediate on this delicate 
subject. Admitting the Monroe Doctrine into the league 
covenant meant a weakening of the President. It gave his 
opponents the best possible opportunity to press their claims. 
Italy, seeing her advantage, immediately demanded Fiume, on 
pain of recalling her delegation. The French returned to 
their huge indemnities and strengthened their claims for the 
Saar district, even for the Prussian region that lay north of 
the Saar basin. The diplomatic maneuvers were making fast, 
when the Japanese renewed more vigorously than ever their 
demand for the recognition of the equality of all peoples.^ The 
President intimated on April 1st that he would leave for home 
if the Rhine frontier were longer demanded. His reply to the 
persistent French argument was that he would not create 
another "Alsace-Lorraine." It was this ceaseless heckling of 
Wilson by the French militarists about the annexation of all 
German territory west of the Rhine that caused the long de- 
lays and that was breaking his health. 

If there was ever a clear case of short-sighted social reac- 
tion against a far-sighted liberalism, it was just this intense 
struggle between Clemenceau the realist and Wilson the 
idealist. The one reviled the fourteen points as the "four- 
teen commandments," the other appealed to the Golden 
Rule as a safe law of politics. The one insisted upon violat- 
ing the terms of the armistice only a few months old, and yet 
pleaded for the sacredness of secret treaties made in 1915; the 
other urged the binding character of the armistice and 
insisted that secret treaties must be discarded.^ The irony 
of it all was that these contentions and appeals could not be 



»The New York Times, March 17th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, and April 3rd. 

'Testimony of Secretary Lansing before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, WasL- 
ington Post, August 12, 1919. Robert Lansine, "A Personal Narrative," 1921, does not 3d<l 
to our in'orraaion about the slrutrKJc at Paris 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 335 

made in the open without an immediate disruption of the 
conference which all men feared, perhaps feared too much. 

The last phase of the deadlock came under circumstances 
well worth a review. Colonel House and Lloyd George 
had authorized a secret mission to Russia a day or two after 
Wilson's departure for Washington. William C. Bullitt, a 
clever and apparently very vain correspondent of the Phila- 
delphia Ledger, headed the mission.^ Bullitt understood that 
certain instructions which both House and the private secre- 
tary of Mr. Lloyd George gave him would probably be 
acceptable as a basis of negotiations with the Bolshevist 
regime in Russia. It was the renewal of the very important 
proposal of Lloyd George and the President when the con- 
ference met. That the whole thing was much in doubt was 
evidenced by the profound secrecy of the undertaking. It 
was a most delicate thing, for public opinion in France was 
overwhelmingly opposed to any dealings with Lenine, and 
public opinion in England and the United States was hardly 
less hostile. 

Messrs. Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens, and a captain of the 
army were taken to the border of Russia on a British war 
vessel. They reached Moscow and within a week securer' 
certain propositions from the Soviet Government on which 
peace and a lifting of the blockade might be arranged with 
the conference. But Lenine stipulated that the offer of 
terms must come from the powers in Paris and not from 
himself and that April 10th was the last day on which over- 
tures would be received. The tone was the tone of a victor 
in war.2 Mr. Bullitt, exultant that his mission promised 
success, returned to Paris at the end of March, at the very 

•Bullitt's story was told to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, September If, 1919. 
"Hearings," 66th Confess, 1st Session, Volume 2. 

'The documents in these negotiations are given in the "Hearings" of the Senate committer 
above mentioned and cited, pp. 1248-50. 



S86 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

moment when the deadlock was apparently beyond the Presi- 
dent's power to break except upon a withdrawal of the 
American delegation. While Clemenceau was asked to give 
up the Rhine frontier, to agree to moderate reparations, and 
to submit the fortunes of France to the protection of a 
league of nations in which few men in France had any faith, 
Mr. Bullitt insisted that this secret mission should at once be 
recognized, that the whole allied world, in spite of the growing 
hostility of the British press to Lloyd George, should make 
overtures to the head of the Soviet Government.^ 

The President thought he could not safely press the matter 
then. The plans of Mr. Bullitt, if not his associates, natur- 
ally leaked into the press of Britain and the United States.^ 
There was widespread disapproval. The student of history 
will hardly doubt that the acceptance of the opportunity 
offered in the Bullitt proposals, which included an agreement 
on the part of the Russians to repay the French loans, would 
have been wise and salutar3\ But their acceptance meant 
the certain overthrow of Lloyd George and the probable 
appearance of Northcliffe as the head of the British delegation 
at Paris. That, of course, would have been the signal of 
victory for Clemenceau, and Wilson would have stood with- 
out even the vacillating support of Lloyd George. Upon 
the refusal of the President to urge the conference to accept 
the proposals from Russia, Bullitt resigned in a spirit that 
revealed a rare mind. One would have supposed that 
he was the next ranking member of the American com- 
mission. And it must be said that every paper of con- 
sequence in the United States published the vituperative 



'The story is told with dramatic effect before the Senate leaders not one of whom would have 
lent a shadow of support to the President if he had urged recognition of Lenine upon the con- 
ference. See "Hearings" for September l^, 1919. 

*Lit$rary Difttt, April 13, 1910. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 337 

letter he wrote to the President in which he announced that 
the United States should never either sign the treaty or adopt 
the league, that Wilson himself had abandoned the leadership 
of mankindj^and consigned the world to another century of 
war.^ 



Bombastic and unreasonable as this attack upon the 
President was it proved to be the signal for organization 
and renewed war upon Wilson. The Nation now sent one 
of its leading correspondents to Washington to bring about 
an alliance between the extreme radicals of New York and the 
Bourbons of the Senate.^ "I have always liked Congress 
whole-heartedly. It is a good American body," said its 
correspondent. That was doubtless true. The amusing 
part was that the spokesman of extreme radicalism, advocate 
even of the soviet system of government, should have said it. 

On April 3rd, Wilson fell ill. He kept to his bed nearly a 
week. At the same time Hungary turned Bolshevist and 
Austria seemed on the verge of anarchy. Japan revealed her 
unyielding will to despoil China. The Poles must have a great 
empire that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and 
Greece would not be content without the possession of Con- 
stantinople. Clemenceau remained obdurate. It was thought 
that the President could not long withstand the pressure. 
The Echo de Paris expressed the common feeling when it said 
on April 5th: "The league of nations lies in pieces in Hotel 
Crillon." Wilson made public his message for the George 
Washington to sail for Brest to be in readiness for him.' 
WTien he called for his ship, the London Times and its sub- 
ordinate papers renewed their attacks upon Lloyd George. 
There came a respite in Paris for a few days after the Presi- 



iThe New York yation. May 31, 1919. 
'Lincoln Colcord in The Nation, May 31, 1919. 
•The New York Times, .■\pril 1-7, 1919. 



338 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

dent rose from his sick bed. It looked to some as if the party 
of Clemenceau would yield. 

It only looked so. Wilson had made it plain to all the 
world what he wanted. A league of nations with powers, 
an international agreement based upon the fourteen points. 
This league he wanted so much that Clemenceau realized 
that he would give much for it. A new way to defeat the 
President was devised. On April 10th, three hundred and 
seventy members of the House of Commons signed a telegram 
to Lloyd George demanding a quick and a hard peace, that is, 
a defeat of Wilson. Six days later Clemenceau's minister for 
foreign affairs asked the French Deputies for a vote of con- 
fidence. It was given on a vote of 334 to 166.^ The radicals 
of the world had said that Clemenceau would be overthrown 
if he repudiated the fourteen points. This was the reply. 
Wilson heard it. On the same day, the 16th of April, Lloyd 
George met the conservative opposition in the House of Com- 
mons and likewise received a vote of confidence. Instead of 
yielding the lines of the deadlock were tightening. There had 
been exactly one month of absolute deadlock. Would Wil- 
son yield or would he risk a break-up of the conference? 

As nearly as the facts now allow one to say, he at last agreed 
to Clemenceau's demand for a temporary alliance between 
France, England, and the United States; and Clemenceau 
yielded the French demand for the Rhine frontier. That 
meant compromise. Immediately Italy laid an ultimatum 
upon the table. It was Fiume or Italy would cease to negoti- 
ate. The same day the Japanese or others, who knew well 
the old game of diplomacy, started stories that Japan had 
been promised Shantung by both France and England, that 
Japan had been offered most favourable terms from Germany 
in 1917, and that the starving fifty -seven millions of Japanese 

'The New York Times. April lltb and 17th. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 339 

must have land, more land. The United States would not 
allow Japanese to emigrate to either of the Americas, where 
hundreds of millions of men might be fed and clothed. The 
United States would not allow the Japanese to seize and 
hold Siberia where there were other vast areas of land un- 
occupied. It was unfriendly, un-Christian; the Japanese 
government could not stand a day if Shantung were not 
granted. "Japan could not view without apprehension the 
moral awakening of four hundred million Chinese."^ 

Clemenceau and Wilson had agreed to compromise the 
great issue! For ten years^ Wilson had taught revolution, 
revolution after peaceful methods, to be sure. Constitutions, 
laws, and social habits which everywhere upheld the unpre- 
cedented inequalities in modern society created by the in- 
dustrial revolution of the last century he would amend, 
repeal, or ameliorate. Even governments had been attacked 
on his tours through England and Italy. It was a day of the 
self-determination of peoples, a new-old struggle for democ- 
racy. As a result of this constant preaching he had been 
elevated to the governorship of a state, then to the presi- 
dency of the United States, and now he stood in Paris, con- 
fronted by the ancient enemy of all revolution, of democracy. 
His own country was officially against him; its articulate 
elements had grown tired of his reforms, and had learned how 
to thwart him. Appealing still to common men everywhere, 
he had adjourned his American struggle to Paris where the 
world was his parish. It was a great moment in history. 
Could it be turned to account for world democracy.'* 

In Germany just four hundred years before there stood 
another professor who had published ninety-five theses whose 

»A widely circulated statement of Viscount Ishii. 

'From the day when the struggle at Princeton became acute and typical of the great aocU] 
itiuggle outside mere college walls. See Chapter III of this book. 



840 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

effect was revolution. Every year the fame and power of the 
new leader spread till German public opinion was stirred to its 
very depths. His sermons and his marvellous pamphlets on 
"The Babylonian Captivity" and "The Freedom of a 
Christian Man" had aroused in the minds of simple and op- 
pressed men all over Germany that hope of a millennium which 
has again and again in history flamed forth and consumed 
some of the dross of overgrown materialism. But when 
scores of thousands of peasants, under the leadership of Hans 
and Heinrich, prepared to act upon the new principles Luther 
warned them against their simple logic. Actual revolution 
he could not inaugurate. The terrors of a national, if not a 
world-wide, social conflict he dreaded. He trembled be- 
fore the consequence which his keener mind pictured to him. 
He compromised and approved a ruthless slaughter of the 
poor peasants.^ 

Confronted with all the facts of the complicated case in 
Paris, would Wilson join the Radicals of Russia, stir the emo- 
tions of the great masses of unknown men everywhere, and 
challenge his own country by breaking up the conference? 
That was the alternative and every keen-minded man in Paris 
knew it. Wilson wished to persuade men; violence and war 
he hated now as when he was a teacher of young men at 
Princeton. Moreover, as a historian, he knew that reforms im- 
posed by violence turn to reactions. Hence Wilson and Lloyd 
George and Clemenceau patched up the great compromise. 
The treaty with Germany and the league of nations for the 
world, as they were offered on May 7th, were the result.^ 

But the immediate consequences of an agreement be- 



>A. C. McGiffert. "Martin Luther and His Work," Ch. XVH, gives an excellent account of thii 
part of Luther's career. 

«New York Timet, April 19, 1919. The details of the treaty bearing "upon boundariM, repa- 
rfetioD, and plebiscites were being prepared by the so-called expert*. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 341 

tween Wilson and Clemenceau threatened disaster to 
the cause the President had nearest his heart. Orlando, 
sorely pressed at home, now demanded for Italy all that had 
been promised in the pact of London and Fiume besides. 
Wilson undertook to reply by his favourite method of open 
covenants openly arrived at. He drafted a very able and a 
very persuasive appeal to the people of Italy. It was of the 
very essence of democracy. No historian can ever condemn 
its spirit or tone or the wisdom of its publication. If open 
diplomacy ever had a strong case, it was in that of the Fiume 
appeal of the President. The reasonableness of it was said 
to be attested by the initials of Clemenceau and Lloyd George 
upon its margins. On April 23rd, when the Italian parliament 
was about to give voice to its will as both the French and 
British parliaments had done on April 16th, he gave the ad- 
dress to the newspapers. 

There was one great outcry that rose from every town and 
countryside of Italy. Men denounced this appeal to the 
people over the politicians' heads. Wilson only repeated 
what everybody had agreed to in the armistice; he pleaded 
for his fourteen points ; he besought the Italians and the world 
at the same time to try for once to apply the principle of 
simple justice.^ But Italy replied in a rousing rejection of the 
proposition. Orlando returned, as Clemenceau and Lloyd 
George had just done, with the full endorsement of his 
country.^ The London Telegraph denounced the appeal to 
Italy as Wilsonian "brusqueness," the London Express said 
Wilson had only "waved a red flag at the Italians." Clem- 
enceau and Lloyd George denied, if not in their own words 
certainly in the words of their subordinates, that they knew 
anything of the President's "rash" purpose. On April 26th 

'The address will be found in The New York Timet of April ii, 1819. 
-The Sonnino-Orlando ministry was a little later overthrown. 



342 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Clemenceau telegraphed the former Italian Premier Luz- 
zatti that French secret promises were certainly not "scraps 
of paper." The telegram was made public. It was a chal- 
lenge to Wilson. And Clemenceau knew that he had worked 
three months to make a scrap of paper of the armistice. Nor 
did the Italians outside of Italy take a different view from the 
rampant nationalists at home. In Paris, in London, in New 
York and Chicago, rousing Italian meetings were held. They 
denounced Wilson. The American Italians cabled their an- 
ger hot across the Atlantic. Senator Lodge declared in 
a widely published address in Boston that Fiume belonged 
to Italy, and that the President had no business to meddle in 
the affairs of other nations,^ as if going to war had not been 
meddling in the affairs of others. 

Perceiving, like good diplomats, that the time was pro- 
pitious, the Japanese delegation now pressed its one great 
demand, abandoning all others, the control and economic 
exploitation of Shantung. England could not deny them. 
Had not England held for three quarters of a century 
similar sway over the Shanghai valley? Clemenceau could 
not deny his support, for France, too, had her hands upon the 
decrepit body of China. Italy would support Japan; Japan 
would support Italy. Both would abandon the conference 
altogether if they did not get what they wished. The Re- 
publican party in the United States could not oppose Japan. 
Had not Mr. Roosevelt himself approved the seizure of Korea 
in July, 1907? And had not Mr. Knox, while Secretary of 
State in 1910, tacitly approved the same Japanese overlord- 
ship of Manchuria? Nor was the Democratic party very 
much concerned about the fate of Shantung. Having yielded 
at all, the President now yielded on Shantung. The whole 
thing nearly broke his heart, nothing more than the cruel 

iTheNew York Timts. April 27. 1919. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 345 

demands of Japan. He tried to parry the fell blow at the 
sovereignty of a friendly and confiding power. Then he 
sought to exact from the Japanese a guarantee that the 
*' lost province " would be restored on a given date. He failed 
in both. There is no denying that the fourteen points, that 
the terms of the armistice, were violated in the treaty about 
to be agreed upon. Wilson was "greatly saddened, knowing 
that public opinion was hardening against him at home."^ 

But what else could he have done? Wilson knows history 
better than most other statesmen have known history. And 
they who know history realize that to forgive a people that has 
committed a great wrong is wiser than to punish them. But 
the millions of disabled or war-worn men in the allied coun- 
tries, the score of millions whose kinsmen lay in the oozy 
ground of a hundred bloody fields, did not know history. 
They will never know history. They could not forgive 
Germany or the Germans. Wisdom is not the part of such 
folk. Few men have been able to rise to the level of Abraham 
Lincoln, and Lincoln himself did not live to test his doctrine of 
love. Wilson yielded to force majeure, thinking wisely, if the 
writer may express the opinion, that mankind was after all 
neither democratic nor Christian. 

In the words of a Republican observer and witness to the 
events he describes the President had fought the good fight: 
"If ever an American statesman had tried in a valiant 
struggle for the ideals of his people, it was Woodrow Wilson at 
Paris in the spring of 1919. He had indeed faced the Beasts 
at Ephesus."2 Perhaps one ought to say "for the ideals of 
the great mass of inarticulate people in his country" although 
one may not be sure of this. At any rate, the work was done, 
and at the plenary session of the conference on April 28th, 

'William Allen White in The Saturday Evening Post, August >6, 1919. 
*Ibid. 



S44 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the main features of the treaty were agreed upon and the cove- 
nant of the league of nations was duly incorporated. The 
next day Stephan Lauzanne spoke for articulate France when 
he said that four times Clemenceau had surrendered to Wil- 
son: 1, when Japan was denied the racial equality that all 
peoples should have; 2, when Belgium was denied the seat 
of the league of nations; 3, when France failed to get the 
Rhine frontier; and 4, when the European allies allowed Wil- 
son to amend the league of nations constitution in the spe- 
cific exemption of the Monroe Doctrine from the jurisdiction 
of the assembled nations. The Italians were equally dis- 
pleased. They had not been granted Fiume. Japan alone 
seemed to be satisfied. 

The German Government was asked to send a delega- 
tion to Versailles to receive the verdict. It was to be a great 
pageant. The very hall in which the German empire had 
been proclaimed was now to witness the undoing of the 
work of Bismarck. Clemenceau, never unconscious of the 
ruthlessness of 1871, was to announce the terms of the peace. 
Germany, ignoring the liberal stirrings of men every- 
where, appointed as the head of the delegation Herr Brock- 
dorff-Rantzau but recently an obedient and willing instru- 
ment of the imperial regime.^ Herr Bosch, leading manu- 
facturer of poison gases, magnate of Mannheim but yester- 
day, was also a member of the commission! Economic and 
technical experts of every class composed the remainder of 
the forty-four leaders who went to Versailles. Two hundred 
others were attached to the commission. A special hotel was 
reserved for their use, and the people of the town and of the 
city of Paris were warned to keep away. Guards were kept 
about the delegation throughout their stay lest the still- 



'The New York Timet, May 4, 1919, gives a list of the members of the German commission 
with a ibort sketch of their lives. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 345 

surging French wrath burst forth and mar the great oc- 
casion. 

On May 7, 1919, the anniversary of the sinking of the 
Lusitania, Premier Clemen ceau handed the Germans the 
text of the treaty. He said: "The time has come when we 
must settle our accounts. You have asked for peace. We 
are ready to give you peace. . . . Everything will be 
done with the courtesy that is the privilege of civilized na- 
tions. . . . It is the second treaty of Versailles. You 
may be sure we intend the treaty's guarantees to be sufficient. 
And you have two weeks to study it and make answer."^ 

Brockdorff-Rantzau replied:" We know that the power of 
the German army is broken. We know the power of the 
hatred which we encounter here. ... I do not wish to 
answer reproach with reproach; but if wrongs were committed 
in the heat of battle, who is responsible for the deaths of 
hundreds of thousands since the armistice.^" It was the 
language of unassuaged anger and passion on both sides. 
Both speakers still thought in terms of military power. How 
much more effective would the German case have been, had 
some German democrat, like Foerster of Munich, who had 
suffered under the heavy hand of the Kaiser, made reply to 
the French? He could have disclaimed for the new Govern- 
ment all responsibility for the war, could have said, as Thiers 
said in 1871 : "We had no part with Napoleon III; we do not de- 
fend what has been done in the name of our country." An ill 
fortune decreed it otherwise. The treaty and the league were 
then put out and received, in so far as the German people were 
concerned, in the spirit of an age that men hoped had passed. 



'The New York Times, May 8, 1919. Coleman Phillipson, "Termination of War and Trea- 
ties of Peace," New York, 1916, pp. 380-391, gives Franco-Prussian treaties of 1871. One may 
see here the model on which Clemcnceau would have shaped the treaties of 1919. The author 
is under obligations to his friend Henry Milton Wolf of Chicago for calling his attention to 
this important work. 



S46 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

The settlement, as Clemenceau called it, compelled Ger- 
many to accept responsibility for the war/ restore Alsace- 
Lorraine, agree to international control of the Saar coal fields 
for fifteen years, yield Danzig indefinitely to the needs of 
restored Poland under international supervision, cede ter- 
ritory to Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and renounce all claims 
to territory outside Europe in favour of the league of nations. 
She must agree to recognize and later, if she joined the league 
of nations, guarantee the independence of Poland, Czecho- 
slovakia, and German Austria. In internal affairs she must 
abolish military conscription, reduce her army to 100,000 
men, destroy, and promise never to rebuild, her former 
fortresses on the eastern side of the Rhine, and agree to cease 
the manufacture, importation, and exportation of the mate- 
rial of war. In order that these conditions be carried into 
effect Germany must agree that the allied governments 
might occupy, at German cost, the bridgeheads of the Rhine 
until the terms were met. The German navy had already 
been surrendered to Great Britain, as custodian for the allied 
governments. But the navy of Germany upon which so 
much enthusiasm had been lavished since the accession of 
William II was never in the future to consist of more than 
six battleships, six light cruisers, and twelve torpedo boats. 
There were to be no more submarines. The Kiel Canal was 
ordered to be opened on equal terms to all nations, as are 
the Panama and Suez canals. 

Germany must pay 20,000,000,000 marks' damages at 
once and agree to pay all actual civilian damages done by her 
armies during the war, as assessed by international commis- 
sions set up for the purpose. She must restore to Britain and 
the other allied peoples the shipping, ton for ton, which she 

•The text of the treaty will be found in The Congressional Record, 66th Congress, 1st 
Session, pp. 835-889. 



I 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 347 

had sunk or destroyed; she must give all the allied nations 
the so-called "favoured-nation" commercial advantages, as 
these had existed in 1914, and allow railway and canal transit 
through her territories to the allied and associated peoples. 
The Kaiser was to be extradited from Holland, where he then 
dwelt in exile, and be delivered by Germany to an allied 
tribunal for trial. Many millions of tons of coal were to be 
delivered each year to Belgium and France in return for the 
coal that had been taken during the war. Machinery taken 
or destroyed during the conflict and forced loans exacted 
from allied populations and banks were to be restored. Cattle 
and horses seized and carried away must likewise be returned 
or paid for. And there were to be a score of international 
commissions, set up by the allied powers under the auspices 
of the league of nations, whose business it should be to assess 
damages and enforce all these decrees. There were also to 
be plebiscites of the peoples involved in the transfer of ter- 
ritory from Germany to Denmark and Poland. Germany 
was not to interfere with these nor to protest, when, in con- 
sequence, Danes and Poles, long accustomed to acknowledge 
German sovereignty, changed their citizenship. These are 
hard terms. No other nation in modern times was ever 
compelled to submit to terms so drastic and far-reaching. It 
would take fifty years of toil and industry to lift the burden 
of debt incurred and, of course, most Germans would inevi- 
tably regard their burdens as grievous and unjust. Few 
penalties have ever been welcome to those that bore them. 
President Ebert and the other German leaders declared that 
Wilson had betrayed Germany. Philip Scheidemann said: 
"President Wilson is a hypocrite and the Versailles treaty is 
the vilest crime in history."^ Germans in the United States 
took the same view. The editor of The Nation called the 



TAo Literary Digest. May ii, 1919. 



348 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

treaty "the madness of Versailles." Of Wilson he said: 
"The peoples of the world see revealed, not a friend faithful 
to the last, but an arrogant autocrat and a compromising 
politician."' 

The editors of the New Republic condemned especially the 
economic features of the treaty. The Dial lamented that 
the abandonment of the fourteen points was the price which 
Wilson paid for the league of nations; while one of the or- 
gans of the Non-Partisan League of the Northwest declared : 
"Wilson went to Europe the idol of all its common people. 
He returns literally without friends. "^ The press of neutral 
countries, particularly those papers that had found excuses 
for the invasion of Belgium at the beginning of the war, 
expressed the same bitter feelings. Russian soviet opinion 
was of course contemptuous, and both British and French 
labour leaders indicated their deep and sincere disappoint- 
ment that Wilson had not been able to inaugurate a new 
era. They did not, like radical groups in the United States, 
denounce the President.^ Wilson himself expressed bitter 
disappointment in an address before the Paris Political 
Science Association. He declared with evident sorrow that 
mankind seemed not to be ready for the new day. His hope 
was in the league of nations. When the passions and the 
vindictiveness of Europe had calmed, he believed that the 
covenant of the league of nations would be used to correct 
the harsh and irritating parts of the treaty. Under the 
league future generations would function and slowly build 
an international organization that would make an end of 
wars.^ 



>TAe Nation, May 17, 1919. 

^LiUrary Digest, May 31, 1919. 

•With the exception perhaps of Mr. Austin Harrison of London. 

'This view seems to the writer to be in accordance with tlie experience of men in the past 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 349 

It was a noble thought; and none will deny that Wilson 
all but gave his life for it. His abiding and unfaltering faith 
in it was one of the causes of the French persistence in the 
fight upon his fourteen points. What was the league? A 
loose association of sovereign states that was not to infringe 
upon the absolute independence of any member. It was to 
include every nation, although for the moment Germany, 
Austria, Hungary, and Soviet Russia were not to be members. 
For a hundred and fifty years the idea of national unity and 
perfect national sovereignty had been perhaps the most im- 
portant social force in Western civilization. For it Lincoln 
had waged a terrible war and given his own life. For it 
Bismarck and Cavour had wrought like modern Titans, like 
Jesuits who justified any means, so the end was desirable. 
Now, when nationalism was in its full flower, Wilson set about 
modifying that perfect structure reared upon foundations 
that had cost so much blood and tears and treasure. And 
the logic of history and events compelled him to do so. He 
would, in the very phraseology of the Fathers of the American 
Union, set up a confederation. It was to have no powers of 
taxation, but it might ask the various member states to con- 
tribute to its necessary work. It was to have no direct 
jurisdiction over individuals, but it was to prescribe rules, 
hours, and conditions of labour. It was to set up no armies or 
navies, but it was to supervise the armaments of all member 
peoples. Its business was to arbitrate the differences among 
states, to reason with peoples that were wrought upon by 
politicians to make war, and to set limits to the exploitations of 
capitalists in order that men might be saved from the calamity 
of another great war. It was to suggest and enforce by 
moral pressure that very deliberation which the hot-tempered 
leaders of Germany would not permit in the summer of 1914. 
Moreover, it was to guide the fortunes of weak or backward 



350 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

peoples, like the folk who inhabit Africa or bring rubber out 
of the forests of Brazil, and prevent cruel economic oppression, 
as well as the hitherto common practice of egging barbarous 
peoples to war upon each other for the benefit of superior races. ^ 
These influences, the international conferences, and the 
moral forces were to emanate from the ancient city of Geneva. 
It was historically fitting that the city of John Calvin should 
be the capital of the league of nations. There a permanent 
secretariat should have charge of clerical and notarial affairs 
of the league. There the assembly of the world federation 
was to meet from time to time and discuss the common con- 
cerns of mankind. Each state was to have one vote, and 
resolutions of the body were to be carried before a smaller 
council for final action. The council should be composed of 
representatives of five great powers at first, later of nine; 
that is, Germany, Russia, Hungary, and Austria were ex- 
pected to take their places in the central world body after a 
short period of probation. Voting would be by states and an 
important resolution, to become effective, must pass unani- 
mously except for the opposition of a state whose conduct 
was under consideration. And any state not represented in 
this executive council should have the right to be heard on 
any matters vital to its people. All states were to agree to 
submit their cases to this body for arbitration and each one 
was also to agree to arbitrate disputes according to the verdict 
of the council or, in cases where this was not thought to be 
possible, wait six months before resorting to any warlike 
measures. Finally, if war should occur, contrary to the votes 
and good offices of the council, the people initiating such a 
war was to be boycotted by all the other states of the world. 
Moreover, no nation was to negotiate any agreements or 



'The treaty and the league covenant will be found in The Congressional Record, 66th Con- 
gress, 1st Session, 835-889. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE S51 

treaties but upon presentation, registration, and publication 
with the league council. And it must not be forgotten, that 
every state that entered the league should recognize and de- 
fend the boundaries and assist to keep the peace of the world, 
as arranged in the treaty. The league was to be a stabilizer 
of the world. But where grievances and unjust boundaries 
were set up in the treaty there was a remedy, China might 
protest before it the continued holding by Japan of the Shan- 
tung province, and the council must hear and decide its pro- 
test. Hungary might complain at the conduct of Rouraania , 
or Germany at the pretensions of Poland, and both would 
get a hearing and doubtless get relief. 

It was not an outlawry of war as so many idealists who had 
followed Wilson to Paris wished, as almost every German 
and Irish leader in the United States contended that it 
must be. To ask that was to defeat the league idea. But 
no historian, not bound by nationalistic or racial prejudices, 
no thoughtful man, save those who have no faith at all in the 
efforts of common men, will deny that it was a noble plan, 
well framed and admirably calculated to effect the utmost 
that mankind would support. It was worthy of the Presi- 
dent of the United States and worthy of men like James 
Bryce and John Morley who, in their old age, endeavoured to 
crown their long and useful lives with an act that should bless 
mankind for all time. To secure the adoption of this tenta- 
tive agreement by all the powers represented at Paris Wilson 
had yielded to terms in the treaty with Germany that were 
regarded by him as unwise; he had yielded to certain obvious 
violations of his fourteen points; he had even permitted the 
dangerous guarantee of Shantung to Japan. ^ 

From the very day that Wilson landed in France, the 
European diplomats and most of their responsible leaders had 

>Tke President himself said as much on his Western toiir. 



352 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

distrusted the idea of such a league or any league. Clemen- 
ceau, as the apostle of the real, jeered it. Practical British- 
ers and imperialistic Italians had said they would accept the 
league, if first they received the good things which allied 
victory put within the power of the conference to grant them. 
And from the fateful day of the congressional elections in 
November, responsible leaders of the Republican party, aided 
by political opponents of the President in the Democratic 
ranks, had declared that the Wilson ideal was wrong, that 
the league would violate all the teachings of the Fathers, and 
that its adoption would be the beginning of the end of the Re- 
public. These were hereditary foes of the x\dministration, 
those older social forces in the North who could never think 
that the agrarian and provincial elements of the country 
ought ever again to aspire to control. They also represented 
a large, purely business element of the nation that wished, 
above all, to have no central world-power pass upon economic 
barriers, the reasonableness of tariffs, or limitations upon 
commercial exploitations. They feared England purely upon 
a commercial basis. 

These men and forces Wilson had been compelled to 
reckon with in the matter of the Monroe Doctrine and in 
the more important problem of an ultimate world free 
trade. Their influence had compelled him to ask that 
peculiar amendment to the first league covenant the ask- 
ing of which gave Clemenceau his first real victory over the 
President. Under the leadership of alert, able, and inveter- 
ately hostile men, other groups of the United States were glad 
to range themselves without asking questions of their new 
allies. Before the Germans submitted the treaty and the 
league to their government, the lines were already drawn for 
the last great struggle. The Senate would be the arena, as it 
had been so often before in the history of the United States. 



THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 353 

The people would be the witnesses, the jury in a certain sense, 
although it was too late to hope it was without prejudice in 
the case. 

After weeks of argument and some minor amendments 
the German commissioners signed the treaty including the 
league of nations covenant. It was on June 28, 1919. Wil- 
son had called Congress in extra session; he now hurried home 
to render account of his mission and to urge the country to 
hasten a decision in order that the whole world, torn by 
nearly five years of unprecedented war, might have peace. 
He laid the work of the Peace Conference before the Senate on 
July 10th, and announced that he was ready to appear before 
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations at any time to ex- 
plain the treaty. There were other and pressing problems 
before the nation, as pressing as problems could well be. The 
railway situation was almost menacing; the state of things 
in the soft coal fields foretold a nation-wide strike of the 
workers; and in Mexico there were still the difficulties and 
temptations that had confronted him in 1913. Wilson had 
laid down his real task when he went to war with Germany; 
he had been compelled to try his philosophy and his ideals 
upon a warring world; and now he came back to Washington 
to find himself bitterly opposed by the forces in modem life 
that had fought him at every step in Paris. If anything was 
clear to thoughtful men, it was the fact that industrial civil- 
ization knew no national boundaries except for its own pur- 
poses, and that any leader of the United States who endeav- 
oured to make the world a little more democratic must fight 
great industry at every turn and everywhere. Wilson had 
changed only the geography of his fight, nothing more. But 
his work in Paris was fairly before the Senate and the country. 
It remained to be seen whether common men could be made 
to understand the issue. 



CHAPTER XVI 

AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 

AS I have shown in a former chapter, Wilson's world- 
leadership was broken in the congressional elections of 
1918, perhaps the most important of all the popular decisions 
of recent times. When in that election the people of the 
United States endorsed the Roosevelt-Lodge slogan to "put 
the Germans behind the bars, put them in a padded cell," they 
abandoned the W^ilsonian doctrine.^ This was the language of 
the dominant wing of the Republican Party. Yet the majority 
which they won was due to the votes of very different groups 
of the population. In the East as well as in the West the 
Germans almost to a man voted with these extreme Re- 
publicans in order, as some of them said, to "punish Wilson." 
Nor was it different with the Irish in the large cities who 
were disgusted with the idea of the country being in alliance 
with Great Britain. Thus two very large elements of the 
population gave their support to a programme of vindictive- 
ness, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." In order 
to punish Wilson for going to war, the Germans and the 
Irish united behind leaders who meant to fix a Carthaginian 
peace upon Germany, such as Germany indeed had declared 
that she would visit upon the allies. ^ 



^Supra, 270-75. 

^Statements of Roosevelt and Lodge will be found in 3'. F. Moors, "The Great Issue", 27-35. 
The Springfleld Republican, November 18, 1920, gives an analysis of the vote in certain dis- 

354 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 355 

This decision left Wilson two lines of procedure. One was 
to remain in Washington and fight a losing struggle with 
Congress, at the same time trying to guide the negotiations 
at Paris. The other was to go to Europe and seek to use 
his prestige in such a way as to secure a peace that would 
commend itself to the American people in spite of the recent 
verdict. The former alternative was urged by all his op- 
ponents, including Secretary Lansing; the latter was pressed 
upon him by most of his friends and by all those liberal- 
minded folk who still hoped for a peace of reconciliation, 
an honest effort to make an end of war. Wilson's decision 
is well-known. It was natural. Nor will historians cavil 
that he endeavoured to carry with him a group of assistants 
who were in sympathy with his ideals. Machiavellian 
strategy probably would have suggested the appointment 
of certain bitter opponents as commissioners in order that 
they should bear a share of the responsibility. But that 
was not done, or not intentionally done. And as I have 
shown, Wilson returned with a treaty that was only half 
as good as he had hoped and worked for. In Paris, Secretary 
Lansing announced that the work was mainly bad. In 
New York the so-called liberal periodicals denounced it 
as a pact with the devil. In Washington the senators who 
had demanded that Germany be put behind padded prison 
bars now turned toward the German voters of the country 
and asked if ever there had been a more cruel treaty. A 
leading newspaper procured a copy of the treaty before it 
was duly submitted and heralded it to the country as if it 
had been the pact of thieves that would convict every one 



tricts of New England. I have made similar analyses of the vote in Indiana congressional 
districts, notably the 3d and 12th, and also a study of Variderhurg County, Indiana; similar 
studies of the vote in Missouri and Minnesota reveal the same drift. It was plainly a con- 
certed purpose of these elements to punish Wilson for RoinK to war. It was their first chance. 
Republican leaders egged them on. 



356 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

who had put his hand to it.^ It was plainly the old party 
game at its worst, a plan to weld together, through hatred of 
Wilson, the business interests, the Germans, the Irish, and 
other unassimilated nationalities. 

And the party gave up what was meant for mankind. 

If Wilson were to succeed he must move quickly. It was 
to be the supreme test of Presidential leadership. And now 
the penalties of his former successes came home to him. 
He had pressed through Congress his greatest measures only 
by "crowding" congressmen in a way that congressmen 
always resent. He had hardly a score of real friends in 
the two houses of Congress, including the Democratic mem- 
bers. And some leading Democrats in the various states 
were his bitterest enemies, men who had been defeated for 
reelection because of his advice to their constituents. The 
country had approved his conduct, I believe, in every such 
case; but the country was now disposed to use the malcon- 
tents to punish Wilson.2 It could hardly have been other- 
wise. Cleveland was in a similar plight when he declared in 
1894 that his own party leaders had betrayed the interests of 
the country. All the Democratic machine forces were fight- 
ing Wilson. Of course all the Republican machine leaders 
were doing likewise. Nor had Wilson a phalanx of office 
holders who w-ould swear by him. The postmasters were 
mostly on the civil service list and the last men in the world 
to jeopardize their positions by loud talk. The reformers, the 
men who had shouted loudest when he was reelected in 1916, 
were now denouncing him because he had not overborne the 



•The Chicago Tribune in whose editorials Wilson had only recently been condemned as too 
friendly to the Germans. 

'Senator Vardaman's case comes readily to mind. There had been similar cases in several 
other states. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 357 

delegates of the other nations at Paris and compelled them 
to agree to a treaty that included each and every one of the 
fourteen points, even when the country had but recently 
said that it did not believe in the fourteen points at 
all.i 

When Wilson was about to attempt to wring from an 
unfriendly Congress its approval of his work at Paris, and 
just as he was making ready to argue with the voters of the 
country who had in their last election condemned him upon 
pluralities that totalled two millions, he was more seriously 
ill than he had been at any time since his career began. 
During most of the closing weeks of July, 1919, he was com- 
pelled to seek relief through the agency of electric baths and 
massages. Doctor Grayson was a constant attendant and al- 
ways in anxious suspense about his patient. Seeking recreation 
from all his worries, Wilson resorted to the presidential yacht, 
Mayflower, at week-ends and thus for a day or two at a time 
endeavoured to rest. But there was no rest. Everybody 
who visited Washington wished to see the President. And 
hundreds of thousands to-day condemn and even denounce 
him because he could not grant their requests for interviews. 
He was called "egocentric." He was declared to be the 
most secretive of men. Washington society hated him with a 
consuming hatred. But all the time it was mainly the con- 
dition of his health that forbade him to give time to anything 
but the most pressing public business. And for this he was 
ever ready. Never has a president attended to the func- 
tions of his office under such terrible handicaps, under the 
constant threat from his physician that he would speedily 
fall a victim to his work. Yet the public, knowing full 
well that he was not a vigorous man, daily increased its 



*Thi3 attitude is best expressed in the editorials of The New Republic, pattim. 



358 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

demands and multiplied its complaints about trivial as well 
as great concerns.^ 

As the struggle over the treaty became intense, the Euro- 
peans who would be most benefited by a prompt ratification 
intensified their campaign of disparagement. Italy com- 
plained in August that she had not been included in the 
proposed treaty between France and the United States, 
under which the former country was to be guaranteed against 
another German attack. The poet d'Annunzio was in the 
midst of his campaign for the seizure of Fiume. On Septem- 
ber 12, 1919, the wild Italian made a sensational entry 
into the coveted port, and proclaimed that the Italian flag 
should never be lowered.^ All over the world men jeered 
Wilson for this turn of events and leaders of the Peace 
Conference, still in session in Paris, seemed to enjoy the 
embarrassment of the President upon whose success de- 
pended the very stability of their own countries. People 
asked Wilson in derision: "Where is your millennium?" 

The Germans, entirely oblivious of the fact that it had been 
Wilson, and Wilson alone, who had prevented the annexation 
of all their country west of the Rhine to France,^ ignoring 
his great service to them and mankind as a whole in pre- 
venting a victorious and destructive march in the autumn 
of 1918 of the allied armies through Germany and into Ber- 
lin, now redoubled their angry denunciations. Nearly all 
German-American papers and periodicals in the United 
States preached the same gospel of hate, as they endeavoured 
to solidify the German vote for 1920. And the cartoons 
of Jugend and Simplicismus in Germany strove to outdo 

'Andrew Jackson was frequently ill while he was President, and he suffered sometimes 
intensely, but he was never in peril of his life, and he was frequently told so by physicians. 

2E. J. and C. G. Woodhouse in "Italy and the Jugo-Slavs" have given a good account of this 
aftermath of the Great War. 
^Andrew Tardieu, "The Truth al>out the Treaty," makes this clear beyond a doubt 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 359 

Raemakers himself in vicious cartoons of Wilson. While 
Frenchmen never thought of relenting in the least in their 
age-long hatred of the Germans, they now increased their 
dislike of Wilson. Because Wilson delayed offering the 
so-called reinsurance treaty with France to the Senate until 
he could get some assurance that the main treaty would be 
favourably acted upon, French leaders complained that the 
Anglo-Saxons, who had saved them, were jockeying them. 
Nor was it merely the work of disappointed statesmen. Foch 
did not stand alone in his denunciation of Wilson. The 
French elections of November, 1919, resulted in an over- 
whelming victory for the reactionaries, but when the Cham- 
bers proceeded to choose the next President they defeated 
Clemenceau largely on the ground that he had yielded too 
much to Wilson.i 

Italy, Germany, and France would have no more of 
W^ilsonism. In England, the coalition Govermnent leaned 
more and more to the Tory point of view. Mr. Lloyd 
George was unable to calm the Irish volcano. The reason- 
able Home Rule plan of Sir Horace Plunkett upon which 
Wilson and Colonel House had bestowed so much attention 
was repudiated by both the Sinn Feiners and the Ulsterites. 
Force was then applied after the manner of the Germans of 
1914. Lord French and Sir Edward Carson paraded in 
Dublin on August 20. Henceforth it was to be war in 
Ireland, which was equivalent to war upon Wilson in the 
United States, where Irishmen are proverbially more Irish 
than the Irish at home. Moreover, the British Government 
took a stiffer attitude in Mesopotamia and in the application 
of her mandate for the German colonies in Africa. The 
mission of Earl Grey, for whom Wilson was known to enter- 
tain a high regard, to the United States could hardly succeed, 

'The "American Yearbook," 1913, p. 152. 



360 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

for he brought as an attache a man whose retirement Wilson 
had been compelled to request in 1918, because of offen- 
sive and undiplomatic conduct. Everybody was putting 
his "worst foot foremost" at the most critical time in 
world history since armistice day. To make matters worse. 
Earl Grey, not seeing the President in person, established 
connections with members of the Senate who were at the 
moment doing their utmost to discredit the President.^ 
Even if things had gone smoothly with Earl Grey in Washing- 
ton, his cordial reception by the President would have in- 
tensified the bitterness of the Irish and the Germans, just 
then giving uproarious receptions to de Valera, former 
Governor Dunne and Frank J. Walsh, as they went about 
the country denouncing Wilson, his treaty and "perfidious'* 
Britain.^ 

Not only did the leaders of the great European nations feel 
compelled by their supporters and peoples to make Wilson's 
fight for the treaty doubtful. The heads of the small states, 
even those who held their positions because of Wilson's 
diplomacy, turned upon him. The Poles, following now the 
lead of France, were seeking to wrest from Bolshevik Russia 
vast stretches of territory on which only scattered Polish 
settlements were to be found. The Jugo-Slavs blamed 
Wilson because d'Annunzio and the Italians demanded 
and held Fiume, their one way to the sea and world markets. 
War between the two contestants appeared imminent 
at the moment Wilson must argue that the treaty would 
put an end to wars. Rumania marched into Hungary, 
took away vast booty, and held the capital for a considerable 
time; and Greece seized parts of Turkey without awaiting 



'His efforts, reported in the press, were doubtless Intended to further the cause of adoption^ 
but they were nevertheless harmful in their effect. 

"See New York Times, July 21. 1919. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 361 

the award of the Peace Conference. Persia, Mesopotamia, 
Syria, and Armenia were still the objects of angry gestures 
among the great powers.^ The President must in the nature 
of the case cry peace when there was no peace. 

Thus, without united support in his own party and with 
the bitterest hatred known to the halls of Congress since the 
days of Andrew Johnson dominating the minds of the op- 
position, without powerful economic support in the country, 
with a cabinet whose members were decidedly deficient 
in the gift and art of public speaking, and with all the leaders 
of Europe putting obstacles in his way, Wilson now addressed 
himself to the greatest task that any American statesman, 
save Lincoln, ever undertook. His first moves were, after 
the manner of happier days, designed to clear the ways of 
problems accumulated during his absence, while the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations endeavoured to incubate a 
policy. 

But the encumbrances in the way threatened at once to 
become the major problems. The mounting cost of living 
and the public fears that there was to be no end to the extor- 
tions of privileged business enterprises demanded immediate 
attention. The Federal Trade Commission had finished 
its great and valuable investigation of the meat packers,^ 
which supplied the facts for a solution of the most important 
food problem. A conference of the President, the Cabinet, 
and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission was held 
during the closing days of July. On August 8, Wilson ad- 
dressed the two houses, announcing that he would use the 
powers of the Government to lower the price of flour, reduce 



The "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 151-194, gives the story of these contests and dis- 
orders. 

^Report of The United States Federal Trade Commistion on the Meat-Packing InduMry, 
Washington, June 24, 1019. 



362 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the price of cold-storage products by putting on the market 
the Government's reserves for war purposes, prosecute 
offenders where possible under the law, and focus public 
opinion upon evil-doers wherever the law proved ineffective. 
New powers were asked to enable him to punish profiteers, 
to have the cost of goods at place of origin marked upon the 
packages, require Federal licenses for corporations doing 
interstate business, control the issue of corporate securities, 
and make further investigations as to the cost element in 
mounting prices.^ This was a long step forward. Business 
men feared it was only the beginning of other steps toward 
rigid Government control and partial ownership of certain 
great interests. 

The country was excited. Congress was angry and sore, 
hardly knowing its own mind, except that it did not like 
positive leadership. The reply of the packers in this state 
of things was to reduce the prices paid for hogs and beeves 
at place of original shipment by one third. On August 8, 
1919, hogs sold at the farms for 21 cents a pound on the hoof. 
Before September 1, they sold for 14 cents a pound. The 
prices paid for beeves took a similar turn downward. But 
the price of dressed meats to consumers in the cities remained 
the same or mounted higher during the next twelve months. 
That was the reply of business men to the demand for 
a lower cost of living. It touched Wilson's leadership at 
the weakest point. The farmer was to suffer while no one 
else got relief. Wilson was not extricating himself. 

On August 14, the farmers of the West appeared by delega- 
tion before the President and demanded that he manage 
to reduce the cost of living without lowering the price of 
grain. At the same time, the cotton farmers, whom the 



'Summary of this address will be found in the "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 18-19; 
also verbatim in Congressional Record, August 9, 191!). 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 363 

Westerners envied because the price of their crops had 
escaped Governmental regulation, were organizing all over 
the South to demand forty cents a pound for all their output.* 
These were two powerful elements of Wilson's strength. 
They were about to abandon his leadership. Even before 
these events, the heads of the American railway brother- 
hoods, complaining bitterly of the rising cost of living, had 
seen him and asked immediate solution of the railway prob- 
lem. These more conservative labour leaders reported that 
the membership of their organizations was breaking away 
from control and about to inaugurate strikes indiscrimi- 
nately. 

Anticipating the return of the railways to their stock- 
holders at the end of the war, Mr. Glenn E. Plumb, a 
railway labour leader of wide experience, had worked out 
the so-called Plumb plan of railway operation. The idea 
was to bring about a cooperative management among the 
owners, the workers, and the Government, such an arrange- 
ment as would satisfy the workers and give them a return 
that was regarded as proportionate to their contribution, 
leave a reasonable margin of profit to the investors, and give 
to the public a better service. That was the ideal. Wilson 
favoured some such arrangement, but he had not made up 
his mind that the Plumb method was the best arrangement. 
Moreover, the treaty demanded immediate attention, the 
railways might wait. To that end, perhaps with a knowl- 
edge of the President's wishes, the Federation of Labour 
at its meeting in June had refused to endorse the Plumb 
plan. The threatened strikes seemed to him in part a move- 
ment to coerce him into taking up the railway problem 
before the treaty was adopted. That would have amounted 

^The Nation, vol 108, pp. 348-49. 

'The New York Times, August 2, 3, .ind 4, 1919. 



364 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

to an abandonment of the treaty and the substitution of an 
exciting campaign about the national railway policy.^ 

During the whole period of the negotiations at Paris, the 
country had been nervous. In February, 1919, a so-called 
general strike was called in Seattle. The shipyard workers 
struck for higher wages, when wages seemed to most people 
inordinately high. On February 6, all other organized 
workers struck. Factories and restaurants closed doors; 
trolleys ceased to run; newspapers did not appear, a fact 
that disturbs the public out of all proportion to the import- 
ance of the press. To prevent immediate suffering a com- 
mittee of the strikers issued permits to milk-carriers, physi- 
cians, and druggists, and workers were allowed to continue 
the operations of telephone, water, and light plants. The 
workers were the masters, actual government was about to 
pass into their hands, for theirs was the power of life and 
death. It was revolution. To break this strike was the 
one thing needful, and Mayor Ole Hanson made a national 
reputation by his handling of the problem. He did break 
the strike, but he left labour people restless, even revolution- 
ary in tone.^ 

Quick upon the heels of this event came the story of the 
formation of the "one big union," for which the Industrial 
Workers of the World were the sponsors. Although there 
was slight chance of success in this venture, men were every- 
where exceedingly nervous. The kidnappers of 1917 who 
had seized labourers at Bisbee, Arizona, and deported them 
were now arrested, and suits for six millions in damages 
were pressed against the mining and railway companies that 
had instigated the kidnapping. The offenders were permitted 
by the Government to settle out of court at the rate of 

'Glenn E. Plumb, "The Plumb Plan," Washington, D. C, 1919. 
*The "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 456-457. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 365 

five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars for each man taken 
away from his home. Feeling ran high against labour every- 
where for this success in the courts. The American Legion 
at Bogalusa, Louisiana, was reported to have killed four 
labour leaders without provocation. Meanwhile, the trial of 
the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago 
kept alive the excitement. In January forty-six members of 
the organization were found guilty and sentenced. But on 
June 7, 1919, fifty-six leaders of the same organization had 
their indictments quashed at Wichita, Kansas; on the follow- 
ing day, however, they were reindicted on other charges. 
The Mooney case was all the while a subject of the keenest 
interest, the President having exhausted his powers in efforts 
to bring about the retrial of that famous labour leader, 
imprisoned in 1916 upon perjured evidence.^ Fear, suspicion, 
and hatred ruled the relations of capital and labour, the 
more since the demand for workers outran the number of 
workers in a manner unknown to American history. 

What made this excitement the more intense was the 
mailing from New York on June 3 of a great number of 
bombs to leading capitalists in all parts of the country, 
in the apparent hope that these would explode in the hands 
or houses of the receivers. One of the bombs was exploded 
on the doorstep of Attorney-General Palmer, and probably 
added to the ill fortunes of thousands of innocent foreigners 
during the next year. During August, 1919, there were 
wild-cat strikes all over the country: in Government ship- 
yards, on the docks of New York, in the various trolley and 
underground transportation systems. Even the police of 
Boston went on strike and all but converted the governor 
of that state into President of the United States, because 



'Mooiiey*8 sentence to death was commuted to life imprisonment. For brief statement 
about Mooney, see "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 451-452, 



366 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

he at the last moment was persuaded to act vigorously. 
Late in August the railway shopmen demanded higher wages 
from the Director General of the railways, threatening an 
immediate walk-out unless their demands were acceded to. 
Wilson ordered the men to defer their grievances upon 
penalty of military intervention, in case of contumacy. But 
at the same time the hordes of workers in the steel mills of the 
country made ready for a nation-wide strike. Their case 
was espoused by the Federation of Labour, whose leaders 
had cooperated with the President so vigorously during 
the war and at Paris. Moreover, the steel workers were 
shown to have a genuine grievance.^ They asked mainly 
for the recognition of their leaders, that is, for the privilege 
of collective bargaining, demands which the Government 
had recognized under all administrations for twenty years. 
If the steel strike materialized, Wilson would be compelled 
to take a hand. He was presented with the statement 
of their purpose while he was touring the far West on be- 
half of the treaty. He begged the men to defer their demands 
till a better season. They refused, and Wilson was brought 
into conflict with the Federation of Labour, .a thing that no 
Democratic President may permit without serious risk, for 
presidents set up by that party are closer to labour than 
those who represent the Republican Party.^ 

With all these dangers and menaces to his leadership 
and to the adoption of the treaty, Wilson was brought to 
the point where he must take sides. He might join the 
railway men, the steel men, labourers in general. If he did 
so, he not only challenged business, he must be prepared 
for the opposition of the farmer elements of the South and 



^Report of The World Inter-Church Movement, 1920, endorsed by bishops and other lenders 
of the Protestant churches. 

'Compare President Charles W. PTiot's article, Atlantic Montkli/, October, 19^0. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 367 

West, where organized labour has few friends, and where few 
men even seek to understand the difficulties of workers 
in the great cities. Wilson is a liberal. He sought during 
August, 1919, to mediate between Labour and Capital, and 
being of the party and faith of democracy, he inclined to the 
side of Labour. If now he actually took that view, he must 
seek to work with the Federation of Labour and force business 
to surrender, or he must espouse the more radical cause 
and take steps looking to revolution. Few statesmen wish 
to risk revolution, for that defeats its own purpose, ex- 
cept in extreme cases. Wilson had no other choice but to 
call an industrial conference. That he did upon the eve 
of his departure for the West. But he did not do this before 
he tried to induce Congress to act with him. Congress did 
not wish to aid him in any venture. Hence he invited men 
to participate in what was called the President's Industrial 
Conference which was set for October 6, when he expected 
to return from his western speaking tour. He would then 
preside over the gathering and seek a way out of the in- 
dustrial wilderness. The body was to assemble in three 
branches, capital, labour, and the public. Many of the 
ablest men in the country accepted service in this body.^ 
High hopes were set upon the undertaking. It was, however, 
the President's movement. If the treaty were accepted 
and the conference found a way to bring Labour and Capital 
into better relations, Wilson would recover the great prestige 
of the summer of 1918, Clearly the interest of the country 
required that he should succeed. Would he be permitted to 
succeed? 

Another problem of equal political though not equal 
social importance now pressed upon Wilson's attention, 
the prohibition question. The Eighteenth Amendment 

»"The American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 28-30. 



868 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

had already been added to the Constitution, and the Federal 
Supreme Court had declared that all the long road to adop- 
tion had been regularly followed. There was nothing for 
wet mouths to do but become dry. The majority had 
spoken; that majority had then been increased to two 
thirds of the states. It was fixed. The only remaining 
question was the congressional definition of intoxicating 
drinks.^ From Wilson's point of view a drastic enforcement 
act would be premature. People must learn more of the 
value of abstinence from drink. So great a change must come 
through education. He preferred to delay the prohibition- 
ists' programme until public opinion could catch up a little. 
Moreover, he wished the treaty, which concerned the whole 
world, especially its economic life, to take precedence. 
Besides, the Democratic party of the North was rather more 
wet than dry, while the Democratic party of the South was 
the reverse. This affected Wilson's leadership deeply. 
Again, the labouring groups of the North were almost in- 
variably wet, while the farmers of the country were generally 
dry. Here was another chance of a rift in the President's 
support. In spite of these complications the leaders of the 
Prohibition forces pressed for immediate action. This was 
not because they wished the treaty to fail; they wished to 
strike while the iron was hot. Prohibitionists were gen- 
erally churchmen and as a rule liberal in politics, and so 
desired very much the prompt adoption of the treaty. 

It was one of those dilemmas that democratic government 
is often confronted with. Neither side could well surrender, 
although the historian cannot overlook the partisan advan- 
tage that is ever taken of such a situation. Wilson's intense 
interest in his own great work, his physical exhaustion, as 
well as his tendency to consult with too few outsiders, 

'"The American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 55-58, gives tbe facts. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 369 

led him into a semi-hostile attitude. The Prohibitionists 
slowly became skeptical of him, which made them press 
their own case the more intensely. This divided the Demo- 
cratic Party; it angered Labour; it gave men an excuse to 
abandon Wilson's other and greater work. When hearings 
were held on the proposed Volstead act, there was much bad 
feeling; there was more bitterness among liberals than 
augured well for future trials of strength. But the Volstead 
bill became a law. It gave drastic powers to Federal officers 
who were to enforce the measure. The bill reached Wilson 
after his return from the West, and the President vetoed it. 
A few hours after the veto was returned to Congress, the bill 
was repassed in the House upon a vote of 178 to 55, a warn- 
ing to the President. The charm of the great leader was 
disappearing. Men were no longer afraid of his opposition. 
He had surely fought a great fight since November, 1918, 
and he was by no means without power and influence. But 
members of his own party were now forward in public at- 
tacks upon him. 

All this while the Senate refused positive action on the 
treaty. Its leaders really liked the treaty. They wished 
it were more severe rather than more moderate in its stipula- 
tions about German reparations. The league was rather too 
weak for Republicans of the Taft wing of the party. The 
so-called radicals, Johnson and Borah, would have no league 
of nations at all. It was to them evidence of a permanent 
peace with Great Britain — a condition which American 
politicians have dreaded since 1776. ^ Besides, the Republi- 
can leaders of the Senate were hearing from their constituents 
in a way that made them doubt the wisdom of their course. 
There is a report well vouched for that one important Re- 

'The "Autobiography of Martin van Buren," American Historical Report, 1919, gives a re- 
markable history of this influence in American President-makins. 



370 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

publican member of the Committee on Foreign Relations de- 
clared in a semi-public speech that, if Wilson were to die, the 
Senate would adopt the treaty without change.^ Another 
report that the writer cannot doubt is that it required 
extraordinary outside bolstering during all that autumn to 
prevent Senator Lodge from acquiescing and recommending 
the adoption of the treaty, including the league. That was 
the better nature of bitter partisans responding to the 
better judgment of the country acting through unofficial 
channels. Wilson was about to succeed in spite of the 
defeat of 1918, in spite of the weaknesses of a treaty which 
was worse than it should have been because of that defeat. 
If he won, the labour problem might be ironed out in the 
coming conference and the labour situation in the world 
would be smoothed in the international labour conference 
to be held in Washington under the auspices of the League 
of Nations the following November. Wilson was due to 
win. Could he be permitted to win? 

In the hope of speeding up things, he undertook to bring 
members of the Senate into conference. Then he invited 
leaders to the White House for private discussion. Senator 
Borali won for himself a unique and unenviable position 
in history by refusing to soil himself by contact with a 
President who will surely go down in history as one of the 
very noblest of all the men who have ever led the nation.' 
And certain so-called liberal periodicals took occasion now 
to applaud the deed and to publish Mr. Borah's platform 
in which he declared that, if the Republican Party accepted 
the League of Nations, he would form a new party and make 
certain the defeat of the Republicans in the next campaign. 

'Statement of a New England senator repeated to the writer by a prominent Republican 
two or three days after the event, September, 1919. 

The New York Times, August 17, 1919. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 371 

This was not the conduct of men of balanced judgments. It 
was hysteria.^ 

Pressing to a conclusion, Wilson now asked the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations to meet him for conference 
at the White House. He hoped to focus national attention 
upon the one great issue and to induce the Senate to respond 
to that very pressure which he knew to be bearing down 
upon the members of that body. On August 19, the Sena- 
tors sat down with him in the White House — Senator Borah 
still keeping himself unspotted from contact with the wicked. 
Wilson certainly does not appear the wilful and stubborn 
man that he had been charged with being in reports of that 
long and trying discussion. He declared at once that the 
Shantung award did not please him any more than it did 
Senator Johnson. He made plain that the treaty was very 
much of a compromise, that France had not secured the 
Rhineland for which French imperialists had clamoured 
in Paris, that Italy had not really secured Fiume, and, above 
all, that the talk about the six British votes in the proposed 
assembly of the League of Nations was absurd. When one 
Senator suggested that the United States had received none 
of the booty of war, he replied quietly that he had not 
thought of asking for any booty. He did not argue. He 
simply explained that the treaty was an accommodation, 
that it must be adopted promptly as such, else the nation 
would suffer, and of course the rest of the world was already 
suffering. The Senators showed a rather angry spirit; they 
were clearly uneasy and still in doubt whether they ought 
to do what they had made up their minds not to do at any 
cost. There were prickings of conscience that day. Al- 
though the conference continued till long after the usual 
lunch hour, the Senators did not risk the friendly influence 

ir/ie Nation, vol. 108, p. 27-3. 



872 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

of lunching with the President and of the conversation 
that must have followed. It was with rather bad grace 
that they left the White House, having resisted all suggestions 
for confidential discussions. They must have their stenog- 
rapher; they could not trust the President. They were 
clearly afraid of his influence upon themselves.^ 

No one can read what the President said on that occasion 
without feeling the immeasurable superiority of his position 
to that of the men who sought to make him appear to be an 
enemy of his country and its people. And at the time leading 
Republicans like Mr. Taft and Mr. George W. Wickersham 
brought all the influence they could command to sustain 
the President. President Eliot wrote unanswerable argu- 
ments for the newspapers; most leaders of church and educa- 
tional life lent themselves without stint to the same purpose. 
The New York Times, by no means a Democratic organ, 
the Indianapolis Star, the Chicago Evening Post, and the 
Rocky Mountain News, all Republican papers, gave full 
endorsement to Wilson's advice to the Senate. It was all 
in vain. 

Then the President made known that he would agree 
to any amendments or interpretations that did not deprive 
the treaty of its vital parts. He had never pretended to 
give assent to any part of the treaty that would abridge 
the powers of Congress. He knew, as everybody knew, 
that he could not abrogate the constitution under which he 
worked. But he was willing, glad to have Congress reserve 
specifically all such powers. He was willing to have the 
Monroe Doctrine definitely exempted from the operations 
of the League, although he knew that such reservation gave 



^Senate Document, No. 76, 66th Congress, 1st Session. These fifty pages of print will forever 
show how kindly and how earnestly Wilson strove with the bitterest of antagonists to secure 
what was clearly to the best interest of the country and the world. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 373 

Japan or any other power the right to make a similar reser- 
vation. All this and more was known to the members 
of the Senate. But as a member of that body said to a 
constituent in Maine, Wilson might draw a great treaty, 
propose a world peace that was without flaw, but the Repub- 
licans would never allow his work to succeed. "That," 
said the Senator, "was decreed before he went to Paris.^ 
The Senate had brow-beaten Cleveland eight years; it had 
driven John Hay to resign from the McKinley cabinet; 
and it had refused assent to most of the best measures 
of the Roosevelt presidency .^ How could it now forego the 
chance to break the one leader whose career had been and 
still was a reminder that some things were not right in the 
country? The bitterest of the opposition leaders hardened 
their hearts and the more moderate stiffened their necks; 
all chances were to be taken. Wilson must be broken. 

Hoping still for a happy outcome, Wilson set out upon the 
tour of the West on the night of September 1, 1919. He 
endeavoured to carry his oflSce with him in order that the 
routine work of the Government should not suffer. His 
first address was at Columbus, Ohio. It was noted that 
Governor Cox, Democratic leader of that state, did not pre- 
side at the meeting. Nor did the audience prove to be the 
enthusiastic, earnest, semi-religious gathering that Wilson 
had been wont to address in Ohio in 1916. The Germans 
were not there. The Irish did not press the hem of his 
garment, as they had done on former occasions. At Indian- 
apolis there was more of enthusiasm, and in St. Louis a 
demonstration. Was the Middle West lost? I believe 
the spirit that ever denies, the spirit of the East, of racial 
hatreds and economic interests, had already permeated that 

'Letter from said constituent to the writer, February 8, 1921. 
_ 'W. R. Thayer, "Life of John Hay," pp. 215-230, gives interesting testimony on this lubject. 



374 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

section, Wilson showed that he thought so in that he did 
not visit Pittsburg and Chicago. There Democratic gather- 
ings had ah-eady hissed the mention of his name.^ 

An editorial in a New York weekly had declared with evi- 
dent joy that Wilson would never again speak to vast and 
enthusiastic gatherings of his fellows. Was it coming true? 
At Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis, Wilson 
did speak to great audiences, audiences that spoke the 
English language without an accent. But were there enough 
men who loved their own coimtry and the cause of democracy 
living in doubtful states of the North to save the situation? 
That was the doubtful query wherever Wilson went during 
that now famous journey. More than once he said on the 
trip that he was not satisfied with some clauses of the treaty. 
But taken altogether he urged men to accept the treaty because 
it provided the means of correction both of the Shantung 
and the reparations section. Even Ireland would get its 
chance under the league. As he travelled westward, Lyman 
Abbott, President Lowell of Harvard, and some two hundred 
and fifty other eminent men published an appeal to the 
country on behalf of the treaty.^ 

Still the Senate remained obdurate. It did more. It 
called William C. Bullitt, a former confidential official of 
the State Department who had turned venomously upon 
the President in Paris, as a witness before its Committee 
on Foreign Relations. Bullitt undertook to repeat con- 
fidential matters in the presence of former Secretary of 
State, Knox, who even allowed the witness to be the first 
to suggest the impropriety of deciphering in public the confi- 



'I have followed the reports of the New York Times for these meetings, but have also read 
the reports of the Chicago Tribune carefully. 

«The New York Times, September 13, 1919. See also Bearings of the Senate Committee 
OP Foreiifn Relations, fiCth Cortgress, let Session, vol. -2. Testimony of September 12, 1919. 



AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY S75 

dential code of the Government ! What embarrassed Wilson 
was not the revelation of confidential matters, but the 
statement of Secretary Lansing made to Bullitt in Paris, 
that "the American people did not know what the treaty 
and the League of Nations let them in for." It was the first 
time in American history that a secretary of state had placed 
himself in direct opposition to his own chief at a critical 
moment — at the very moment that vital national interests 
were in the balance. Webster had not done so when he 
disagreed with Tyler. Blaine resigned when he decided 
to become a candidate for the Presidency against his chief, 
Harrison, Jefferson differed radically with Washington, 
but he did not publicly appeal to the country, as Lansing 
permitted Bullitt to do, against Wilson.^ 

While the President wrestled with all the complicated 
difficulties, Senators Johnson, McCormick, and Borah 
started upon a tour to counteract the influence of the Presi- 
dent, a thing which, like Lansing's conduct, was also new. 
When President Taft toured the country on behalf of the 
worst tariff that the country had ever had, the Democratic 
senators of the time did not trail him across the country. 
When President Johnson made his "swing around the circle" 
in 1866, not even the rancour of Thaddeus Stevens and 
Charles Sumner suggested a senatorial circus to counteract 
him. In Chicago the three senators spoke to a great, hissing, 
shouting audience of Germans and Irish, some of whom called 
out "Impeach him, impeach him."^ Senators sat upon 
the platform and heard men who love only overseas lands 
hiss their President and shout "Impeach him" without 
rebuke. At the same time the Democratic senator. Reed, 
under the spell of the same kind of audiences, went about 

'Mr. Lansing's "Personal Narrative," p. 270 and on, does not explain. 
'The Chicago Tribune, Septem'oer 11, 1919. 



376 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the country on similar errands. While Messrs. de Valera, 
Frank J. Walsh, and former Governor Dunne conducted 
their campaign of denunciation against Great Britain, 
and raised what they claimed to be millions of dollars for 
the Irish cause. 

Wilson continued his way. In Oregon, in Washington, 
and California his receptions and the demonstrations in 
his behalf were so remarkable that politicians took anxious 
notice, but even there difficulties thickened about him. 
A delegation of labour extremists made demands upon him 
that he was compelled to rebuke. He endeavoured always 
to make them and all men feel that one thing at a time is the 
only safe rule for the solution of public problems, and that 
the treaty was the one thing needful: "Quick ratification, a 
definite peace, will cure the ills of the world. If we do not 
get this we shall have economic disaster."^ And the nat- 
ural consequence of defeat would be the helplessness of 
labour, stagnation of business, and exploitation of the farmer. 
This was a warning, not a threat. The ablest of business 
leaders as well as the best of workingmen aheady foresaw 
coming events. Economists everywhere urged that there 
was trouble ahead. Events have surely shown that Wilson 
was right in his forecast. 

Could the President continue the kilhng pace? Half ill 
when he left Washington, he had not been at his best on 
the tour. And the carping criticism that came daily from 
the East, the unfriendly taunts of certain great newspapers, 
"Go back to Washington," did not add to his vigour and 
faith. In California he spoke under the stress of racking 
pain. In Utah all about him were uneasy lest he literally 
fall in the fight. Before reaching Wichita, Kansas, Septem- 
ber 25, 1919, Admiral Grayson stopped the train and took 

»The New York Times, September 19, 1919. 



AN /VPPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 377 

the President upon a rapid run of a Imndred yards to test 
the patient's powers and to set his circulation going more 
freely. All to no purpose. Wilson collapsed as the party 
neared, Wichita. His appointment there for the next day 
was cancelled. The train was hurried to Washington, and 
the country gradually came to understand that the President 
was a broken man. He endeavoured for a few days to renew 
his former activity; but it could not be. At the moment 
when he hoped to see] the treaty accepted with a few reser- 
vations and definitions, he became too ill to press matters 
further. He did sign bills; he vetoed some measures; and 
now and then he conferred with members of the Cabinet. 
But he could not preside over the industrial conference that 
gathered on October 6. And little was done toward accom- 
modating the differences of Capital and Labour. The great 
steel strike took its fateful course, and Government troops 
were employed to keep order, as indeed they ever must be 
employed in certain contingencies. The international labour 
conference assembled in Washington under the auspices of 
the League of Nations, but Wilson's voice was not heard at 
its sessions. His great career was ended. "Everything was 
balled up," a condition which he had ever sought to prevent. 
The country was leaderless, its most urgent business must 
wait upon a national election that could not be held until 
November, 1920; and the world must likewise wait till 
March 4, 1921, before a serious attempt could be made to 
relieve its woes. All eyes were upon Washington and upon 
the country, while hundreds of thousands faced starvation 
for want of American cooperation in world affairs. 



CHAPTER XVII 
POLITICAL SABOTAGE 

THE Senate of the United States now sought to take up 
the leadership of the world, to formulate a policy that would 
first of all destroy Wilson, and, succeeding in that task, would 
then endeavour to substitute a programme of national selfish- 
ness for that more idealistic programme which the stricken 
President had urged upon men everywhere. The opportun- 
ity and the awful responsibility did not chasten the spirits 
of men who had long proclaimed themselves the "most 
august legislative body on earth." The Constitution of the 
United States gave them the power to advise the President 
in foreign affairs, to consent or give approval to treaties. 
The circumstances of the time and the sufferings of millions 
of people all over the world now rendered their position 
supreme, autocratic in the last degree, a thing which groups 
of men seem to enjoy with less sense of responsibility 
than personal autocrats generally manifest. Many times in 
American history have minorities of the Senate held up the 
affairs of the country for months and years, even when the 
will of the people was flouted. It was only upon the earnest 
intervention of Mr. Bryan that the treaty M'hich ended the 
Spanish war was adopted. As I have indicated on a former 
page, a combination of Democrats and Republicans de- 
feated for years the best work of John Hay. 

But one need not condemn. For more than a hundred 
years the people in pursuance of their ideal of a perfectly 

378 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 079 

balanced government, a scheme designed to thwart leader- 
ship, had observed this particular habit of senators, and some 
of the most fatal policies ever put into effect were pressed 
in this way by senators who have been honoured in their 
day, if not on the pages of informed history. The people 
of the country are responsible; they have never seriously 
endeavoured to change their Constitution in this respect; 
they do not now, in view of the risks of long deadlocks, 
even wish to change it in favour of responsible leadership. 
Americans like a government that can be deadlocked; they 
are afraid of able leaders who conceive great ideas and seek 
to do great things for the nation. This has been so from 
the beginning; it seems likely to continue.^ 

The leaders of the Senate had two tasks in 1919. One 
was to make Wilson appear to be the worst President the 
country had ever suffered from. The other was to withhold 
approval of the treaty until the various un-American ele- 
ments of the country could be aroused to the "crimes of 
Wilson." When these two tasks were performed, the sena- 
tors would quietly agree upon the next presidential candidate 
and then persuade the Republicans in the national conven- 
tion to nominate him. No one can doubt that all this work 
was done with consummate strategy. It is the purpose of 
this chapter to show how the role was played, and how the 
work of Wilson was affected, how the fruits of the war were 
essentially lost because of it. 

The election of 1918 presented the Republicans of the 
country with one of those embarrassing situations which 
Republicans know so well how to meet. In Michigan 
Truman H. Newberry had conducted a campaign for his 
nomination which made the Lorimer scandal of 1910 fade 



iMr. Henry Jones Ford, in his "Cleveland Era," American Chronicles series, has given a 
most accurate picture of senatorial behaviour during two presidencies. 



380 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

into insignificance. Both the Governor and the Lieutenant- 
Governor of Michigan stated pubhcly that the Newberry 
case was a scandal which the party could not palliate or 
excuse.^ In the election that followed the primary debauch, 
similar conduct was continued. All of this was duly brought 
out in the trial in the United States court at Detroit when 
Newberry was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.^ 
It was a bad case. What gave it an embarrassing aspect was 
the fact that Colonel Roosevelt had refused to sit down to 
lunch with Senator Lorimer when he was under investigation, 
that Senator McCormick of Illinois had started his public 
career by the most unmeasured denunciation of Lorimer. 
Now followers of Roosevelt, McCormick, Senator Johnson 
of California, and Senator Cummins of Iowa must seat 
Newberry or lose the control of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations, lose perhaps the w^hole fight upon Wilson. 

This was a dilemma. It becomes clearer when we recall 
that the majority, including the prospective vote of the 
new Michigan member, would be only two. If Newberry 
were unseated, the majority would be one. That would give 
the deciding vote to Senator LaFollette — then under charges, 
urged in bitterest language by Republicans like Lodge and 
Roosevelt, of having sought to betray the country in war 
time by unlawful speech. LaFollette certainly did not love 
his party colleagues. If he should fail the Republicans, 
what embarrassments would follow! Nor was the vote of 
three or four other Republican senators beyond doubt, 
if it came to a tie. And in case of a tie the Vice-President, 
a Democrat, would give the controlling vote. The Republi- 



•The Congressional Record, February 6, 1919, p. 2807. 

^The United States Supreme Court has recently declared the proceedings unconstitutional 
on the ground that the law of 1911 was unconstitutional, a strange ruling in view of scores 
of other decisions of the same court. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 381 

cans must seat Newberry, regardless of scandal and of the 
possible consequences to the party. This decision became 
clear when Senator Pomerene of Ohio endeavoured during 
the months of January and February, 1919, to force a public 
investigation of the case. After some demur by Senators 
Lodge and Townshend, and after it became evident that 
the Democratic Senator Reed intended to aid the Repub- 
licans in their proposed breaking of the President, it was 
openly declared that the Republicans would filibuster till the 
end of the session if any investigation were pressed.^ 

It was at that moment that the Democrats made their 
first great blunder in their defense of the President and his 
cause. They might have focussed public opinion upon 
the unparalleled scandal of a campaign that had cost 
six hundred thousand dollars, and thus they might have 
roused the country to the true state of things. Hoping 
to save the government from having all its affairs held up 
by a filibuster, they allowed their opponents to escape, 
only to find a few weeks later that the filibuster came anyway 
and the most urgent appropriations were denied.^ The 
Republicans outgeneralled the Democrats, for they had 
escaped a real public investigation and they had then manoeu- 
vred so that the President would be compelled to call 
Congress and not simply the Senate together at an early 
day. Newberry was to be seated, the Committee on Foreign 
Relations was, therefore, to be composed of the bitterest 
enemies of the President, and the Senate majority would 
risk all in the effort to undo the settlement at Paris. 

It is a curious fact that the Republican leaders who had de- 



»The Congressional Record, February, 1919, pp. 2817-18. 

2It is quite probable that Democratic leaders were so much interested in what is called the 
"pork" features of the appropriations that they made only a feint of atUcking the Newberry 
corruption. 



882 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

clared that nothing should be done in one of the greatest 
cases of debasing an electorate in the history of the country 
now turned upon the Wilson administration and tried to 
convict it of shameful waste of public funds. In the midst 
of the Great War the Government, supported by all who 
favoured the allied cause, had built ships at reckless expense. 
Nearly five millions of tonnage was added to the shipping 
of the country during the years 1918-1919. It was a race 
for victory. The expense was enormous. The moment 
the war ended the Republicans, as any other party opposition 
might have done, immediately picked upon this as a reason 
for defeating the Wilson leadership. Investigations were 
held; witnesses were subpoenaed to appear, and many, very 
many people made it the first interest of their thinking 
to convict the members of the Shipping Board of corruption. 
The nearest approach to conviction came in the case of 
Charles M. Schwab, a Republican " dollar-a-year man," 
who was clearly not guilty and who with tearful earnestness 
avowed to the country his immaculate innocence. His 
conviction would hardly have served the purpose of men 
whose purpose it was to champion the cause of business on a 
large scale. Of similar import was the re-investigation of 
the men responsible for the waste of hundreds of millions 
in the abortive effort to send a vast air fleet to the western 
front in 1918. After the most careful examination of wit- 
nesses, no one was found who had corruptly used public 
moneys, although blunders and recklessness were brought 
home to many of those who were responsible for the Govern- 
ment's policy. Even more was expected in the investigation 
of the supply department of the American Expedition to 
France. In the winter of 1919 great stores of army supplies 
were sold to the French at very low rates. During the days 
of active hostilities the officers of the supply department 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 383 

spent money lavishly in order to serve the men at the front 
in the best possible manner. General Charles G. Dawes 
was the responsible head of this service. When the investi- 
gation seemed to be finding its way to a round denunciation 
of the Department of War, General Dawes, an orthodox 
Republican, appeared before the committee and boldly 
defended the conduct of the war in France.^ So keen was 
the scent of some of the leaders of the opposition for im- 
agined wrong-doing that on two occasions the President's 
brother-in-law was charged with appropriation of public 
funds to his o^ti personal ends. A certain banking firm 
in Washington, whose officers had waged war upon the 
Comptroller of the Currency since 1913, seemed bent upon 
proving the guilt of this kinsman of Mrs. Wilson. On two 
occasions the press of the country featured this effort and 
gave the voters the impression that Wilson had maintained 
personal connections in office, but at the close of each inves- 
tigation every charge was shown to be false if not malicious. 

These are but a few of the typical cases. The leadership of 
Congress was so hopeful of bringing home to the Democrats 
evidences of corruption and personal peculation on a vast 
scale that it was not until early in the year 1921 that the last 
committee of the House of Representatives finally gave up 
the effort. Neither the President nor any member of his 
Cabinet was ever shown to be guilty of the least wrong-doing, 
a record that has hardly been paralleled since Rutherford B. 
Hayes. Not only so, none of the various boards that ad- 
ministered the great affairs of the country during the war 
was shown to have been guilty of anything more than waste, 
and that under circumstances which historians will refuse 
to condemn. But the campaign from the summer of 



•Reports of all these investigations will be found in Hearingt of the Military Commiltee of 
the House of Representatives, 66th Congress, I si Session. 



384 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

1919 till the election in 1920 was bcased largely upon the 
claim that "an enormous waste of public funds" had laid 
upon the people a "huge tax burden and the high cost of 
living."^ Men who organized their opposition in the Senate 
upon the necessary vote of Truman H. Newberry made the 
country believe that the spending of great sums of money 
in the hope of hastening the end of the war was next to 
criminal! For two years nearly every great newspaper in 
the industrial states published scare articles intended to 
prove that Woodrow Wilson was the most wasteful if not 
the most corrupt President who ever occupied the AVhite 
House. The protests and the answers of those who took 
the trouble to defend Wilson never gained a hearing, even 
when they were published. 

Another and a very effective slogan was that Wilson was a 
confirmed and narrow-minded Southerner, who looked upon 
his office as a means of plundering the rest of the country 
in order to enrich his own section. It is a common saying 
in the United States that any man may become President. 
Yet there is nothing more certainly fixed in recent American 
history than the fact that no one living in the South can be 
nominated or elected leader of the country. So many men 
and women still "think as their fathers shot" that even a 
Southerner long resident in the North is a very doubtful 
nominee for the presidency. Wilson is a Southerner by 
early environment, but his ideals are the ideals of the Ameri- 
can Revolution; his thinking was and is international in the 
sense that early American ideals were international. But 
the aim of senators and the managers of the press, as a whole, 
was to make him appear a provincial of the Old South.^ 

»The Chicago "Daily News Almanac," 1912, p. 230. 

*The New York Tribune maintained this attitude. In an editorial of November i, 1920, 
Wilson's life and work are summed up as sectional and Southern. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 385 

The deepest underlying grievance against Wilson on the 
part of the masters of industry was the income tax, including 
the excess profits schedules. That law was charged to him, 
and it drew from the pockets of New York alone about a 
third of the total returns to the income tax bureau. All 
the South did not pay as much as did the state of New York. 
Instead of sympathizing with that section in its poverty, 
New Yorkers developed a frenzy of hatred for Wilson.* 
Boston could not endure the mention of his name but in de- 
rision ; and in Chicago, in the clubs of the North everywhere, 
he was so hated that some eminent men announced in the 
presence of the writer that it would have been better to 
have permitted the South to have her self-determination 
in 1861: "then we should have escaped Wilson." Although 
the cause was economic, it was Wilson's supposed Southern- 
ism that was discussed as the cause. 

When Senator Lodge discussed the league of nations or the 
subject of self-determination, he took pains to say that the 
South had demanded self-determination in 18G1. That was 
the worst he could say. Northerners everywhere understood 
that. "Vote as your fathers shot." When Mr. Lloyd 
George discussed the Irish problem, he compared the Irish 
demand for freedom with the former Southern demand for 
self-determination. That was the worst he could say. He 
never thought of the American Revolution, or of the struggle 
of the English against Napoleonic domination, or of the 
friendliness of the Southern people to England's better 
causes — it was always the South, the hated South, Wilson's 
South, and Wilson's idea of self-government that must be 
held up to scorn.2 If the South that failed could be made 



■The New York Times, April 18. IQ'^O. 

'See, for example, an amusing discussion of this South-baiting habit in G. K. Chesterton's 
syndicate article, May 1, 1921. 



386 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the model for all unpopular causes, if Wilson could be 
condemned as a Southerner, he would surely go down to 
defeat, because he must win the votes of several Northern 
states. To make this obloquy more effective, the silly boasts 
of certain Southern newspapers about the army camps and 
the great nitrate works at Muscle Shoals were reprinted 
widely in Chicago and other cities. The South boasted of 
Wilson and his works; why was he not simply Southern?^ 

It was a far cry from Wilson the provincial to Wilson the 
internationalist; but this was perhaps the next most effective 
line of attack. The New York Tribune said that Wilson's 
internationalism was developed as a screen to cover his 
southernism. That was indeed a stretch for people who 
claimed to be intelligent, but anything hostile to Wilson 
was acceptable to men who were in a frenzy to destroy him 
and all his work. Senator Lodge charged, and the people 
of the North believed the charge, that W^ilson had created 
a super-government in the League of Nations, that he had 
tried to abrogate the vital powers of the Constitution in 
writing a treaty. Internationalism was now the great sin, 
and all patriots should fly to their tents to save the country.^ 
Not only had Wilson endeavoured to commit the covmtry 
to a super-government; he had sold the interests and sover- 
eignty of the United States to Great Britain. He had agreed 
to an arrangement whereby in the assembly of the League of 
Nations Great Britain was to control six votes as against one 
vote of the United States, the assumption being that Canada, 
New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and India would vote en 
bloc. Now any Republican, particularly Mr, Taft or Senator 
Lodge himself, knew that Cuba, San Domingo, Panama, 

•The Chicago Tribune made the most of this opportunity during the years 1919-1020. 

sSee the keynote speech before the Republican national convention, in the "Repubhcan 
Campaign Teit-Book." 1920 pp. 28-30. 



I 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 387 

Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Liberia had not dared have a 
foreign policy contrary to that of the United States since 
the close of the Spanish war. The American State Depart- 
ment simply tells the representatives of these countries 
how to act in international affairs and they must give heed. 
That would give the United States seven votes in the as- 
sembly of the proposed league; and it was plain to most 
people, lamentable to all Democrats, that Haiti and Mexico 
are all drifting or being forced into a dependence upon the 
United States which would only add to the number of 
American votes in the much-discussed international assembly. 
But there was another curious turn to this argument. 

The leaders of the Republican Party, especially the senators, 
claimed even in their campaign documents of 1920 that they 
had saved the country from that worst of all sins, partial 
repudiation, in 1896. But what Bryan and the free silver 
men of 1896, the Greenbackers of 1880 and the Grangers 
of 1872 were contending for was national isolation, financial 
isolation. In all those years of acute suffering to the farm- 
ers of the country the one thing that radicals demanded 
was American isolation from Europe and all her ways. It 
was the encroachment of the European, especially the 
English, gold standard, a common world standard as it soon 
turned out to be, that Bryan rallied men to fight. He was 
particularly successful in making Irishmen vote for his free 
silver isolation. The Republicans had saved the country 
from that hopeless isolation. Now they turned round. 
They declared that Wilson was the European, and they the 
Americans. Washington and all the other fathers had 
fought England; they had kept their skirts clean of the con- 
tamination of filthy Europeans. Nothing did better service 
in the preparation of the public mind for the campaign of 
1920 than the farewell address of Washington. Even 



388 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

JeflFerson, the internationalist, if ever there was an interna- 
tionahst in the United States, was drawn upon. He had 
hated England, therefore all Democrats should abandon their 
President and vote with the Republicans. Senator Borah 
was especially the champion of this new isolation, the pure 
and unspotted America. Like Bryan in 1896, Borah now de- 
clared that Britain, "perfidious Britain," had only to indicate 
her wishes, and the American President would nod assent. 
Medill McCormick and Hiram Johnson, both recent recruits 
to the doctrine of provincialism, showed what could be done 
with that doctrine before a Chicago audience,^ In order to 
save the United States pure and undefiled, it was necessary 
to rouse those millions of Americans whose primary instincts 
Wfc-re foreign. "America first" preached to Germans and 
Irish! The one who was best fitted to aid the senators in 
this part of their work was the mayor of Chicago, who 
had boasted that Chicago was the second largest German 
city in the world, the mayor who had refused to concur in 
an invitation of Chicago to General Joffre and Mr. Balfour 
when they were arranging the terms of cooperation between 
the United States and the allies in 1917. 

The programme of making the country more provincial 
was pressed to its utmost conclusion. Whenever Wilson 
protested, as he had done more than once in 1919, against 
the Italian demands for Fiume and against the Polish con- 
quests at the expense of Russia, senators protested against 
his protest. In Boston, where the men of the old native 
stocks do not require to be courted. Senator Lodge was known 
to be the champion of the Italian claims, even beyond the 
concessions of the secret treaties of London. He declared that 
the President had no business to interfere with the Italians 



•The Chicago Tribune, Scptenibcr 11, 1!)I9, gives an arcoiinl, of their proviii' in! iippcal in 
Orchestra Hail on September 10, 1!)I!>. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 389 

in their imperialist policies. In similar manner the Poles 
in the United States were stirred to anger against Wilson 
because he would halt their imperialist purposes. It was a 
fixed purpose of the Senate leaders to save the country- 
through stirring the wTath of the various foreign elements, 
a sabotage of the programme of those older stocks of the 
country by every means at hand. One must not blame too 
severely the foreign-born Americans for their ready sub- 
mission to a campaign of flattery and promise. The men 
who flattered were not impractical Bryans of former years; 
they were the great of the country, Lodge, Barnes, Penrose, 
Knox, men who held the purse-strings of great wealth, men 
who had in times past made and unmade presidents. Any- 
body who reads the names of the men who were working 
out the Republican plans, as given in the papers, could see 
that it was the masters of business, stirred as they had not 
been stirred since 1896, who were now in charge. "We are 
not going to be hoodwinked again," they declared. There 
was to be no internationalism. ^ Why should not foreign-born 
and others take note.'* 

Another and a sorrowful fact became evident as the pre- 
paratory campaign proceeded. The negroes, who can hardly 
be expected, as a race, to rise to higher levels of public 
^\^sdom than the whites, thought Wilson their inveterate 
enemy. He had permitted segregation of the races in some 
of the departments of the government; negroes are segregated 
without violent protest in most of the Northern cities. During 
the great and critical days of 1917-1918, they emigrated by the 
hundreds of thousands to the industrial centres of the very 
states that would determine whether Wilson, the would-be 
maker of a better world for negroes themselves, should be suc- 



'AU the morning papers of December 11, 1919. 



S90 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

cessful or not. The negroes worked in the munitions plants 
of the North, upon the railways that carried supphes to the 
alhes. Without this labour, the Germans might well have 
won their fight against all democracy. But this involved 
a curious shifting of the balance of power in the United 
States. 

Negroes who did not vote in the South emigrated to 
Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, to all those centres of Ohio, 
Indiana, and New Jersey where the loss of a vote of the Demo- 
crats was serious and there voted both men and women, for 
the Republicans. In Chicago, they composed an important 
unit in the Thompson organization. In Cleveland they 
enabled the Republicans to take the city from the control 
of men like Secretary Baker and Judge Westenhaver, those 
liberal leaders who had wrested the leadership of that region 
from the old Hanna machine in the period of awakening 
in that state, 1910-1912. The negro population of South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi actually declined 
during the period of 1910-1920, while it increased a hundred 
per cent, in many cities of the Middle West.^ This meant that 
another racial element would be mobilized against Wilson, 
mobilized where the negro vote would be more eflfective 
than anywhere else in the world. These votes alone would 
have sufficed to defeat the Democratic Party in case the 
natives of the region remained divided along the lines of 
party cleavage so well known to American political history. 
And every negro rejoiced at the opportunity to cast a vote 
against Wilson, against the only leader in the world who was 
likely in the long run to aid the negroes in their struggle 
for kindly and just treatment. Thus the negro lent valiant 
assistance in the winning of the war; he was to lend more 



>See tlie spcciHl bulletins of the Census Bureau. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 391 

effective assistance in losing the peace. Old grievances 
never down.^ 

In addition to these charges, namely, that Wilson was the 
head and front of a wasteful and even a corrupt regime, 
that he was a sectionalist of the narrow-minded sort, that 
he was an internationahst obedient to the whims even of 
the British leaders, that he hated negroes with a deep-set 
malignity, there was yet another count: he was the greatest 
autocrat of his time. Having "forced" Congress to act 
promptly upon many great matters during all those eventful 
five years of 1913 to 1918, it was easy for leaders of the 
Senate to convince themselves that the President was quite 
as bad as the Kaiser himself. It was Wilson's success, 
not his failure, that gave men's minds this twist. And, in 
spite of the adverse vote of 1918, he seemed about to succeed 
again. He could not do otherwise than go to Paris in 1918. 
His work there was certainly not without blunder, but it 
was so much better than that of any other great leader there 
that the American people unavoidably felt a pride in him. 
He had surely been iU advised in that famous speech, from 
the same platform with Mr. Taft, when he returned to 
Paris in March, 1919, when he said he would so tie up the 
League of Nations with the treaty of peace that the two 
could not be separated.^ This was a blunder. 

The Republican leaders readily gave this the colour of 
autocracy, as indeed they declared most of his preceding 
successes to have been autocratic. "He forced the allied and 
the associated powers to yield to his demand; he would com- 
pel the Senate to accept the league of nations with the 
treaty."^ There was a certain note of conscious power in 

'A study of this problem would make a valuable contribution to our politicial and racial 
literature. 
2The New York Times, March 5, 1919. 
'"The RepubHcan Campaign Text-Book," 1920, p. 28. 



392 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Wilson's speeches and in his conduct that marked him as 
the successor of Jackson and Roosevelt. No president 
who has been counted successful has been otherwise. The 
presidency of the United States requires men who can compel 
action from static bodies, else they can not succeed. But 
if they possess these gifts and succeed they are at once 
attacked because they are successful. Wilson was an auto- 
crat in this sense, the greatest autocrat that ever occupied 
the White House. The penalty in 1920 was that millions 
of people pretended to believe him an autocrat of the type 
that Germany had sought to force upon the world. 

"With matters slowly taking this turn in the summer of 
1919, the Senate majority set up their Committee on Foreign 
Relations. It w'as composed of three groups. Senator 
Lodge led those Republicans who fa\-oured a harsher treaty 
than the one before them. He and his friends would take 
the treaty, amending it wherever it could be shown that 
W'ilson did not wish it amended. Another group was that 
headed by Senator Knox who represented the more fiercely 
reactionary element of the party, but who were enough 
afraid of the Germans and the Irish in their constituencies 
to offer a separate peace with Germany and leave the allies 
to make the best terms they might. The third group of 
Republicans was that which spoke through Senator Borah. ^ 
These were the men who had sung "Onward, Christian 
Soldiers," in 1912. Among the men who sat on this import- 
ant committee there were two or three friends of the Presi- 
dent. Most of them were, however, enemies of Wilson 
whose passions allowed of little restraint. It was not a 
committee that wanted ability, nor did it fail to represent 

^Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 66th Congress, 1st Session, 
1919. The members of the committee were Senators Borah, Brandegee, Fall. Harding, Hitch- 
cock. Johnson, Knox, Lodge, McCumber, Moses, Pittman. Pomerene, Smith, Swanson, and 
Williams. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 393 

that historic quality in the Senate which finds expression in 
obstruction and negation. 

The first hne of action was taken slowly. Hearings were 
granted to all who wished to express an opinion. On 
August 6, Secretary Lansing gave a long story of the work 
at Paris, concluding somewhat doubtfully in favour of 
acceptance. On September 12, Mr. William C. Bullitt, 
already mentioned, testified to the utter want of foresight and 
liberality of the President while at Paris. Bullitt had 
urged the recognition of the Bolsheviki government in 
Russia, a horrible thing to suggest to most senators. Yet 
his denunciation of the league and of the treaty was welcome. 

Many members of the American Commission to Paris were 
heard on the various phases of the treaty, including Messrs. 
B. M. Baruch, Norman H. Davis, and Professor F. W. Taussig. 
WTiile all were treated with the utmost courtesy and the 
hearings throughout were conducted with the dignity of the 
Peace Conference itself, every "lead" that seemed to point 
to any omission of the President or any racial tangle that 
might prove embarrassing was carefully followed. Nothing 
that had been done at Paris was regarded as in any sense 
settled. The majority members of the committee seemed 
always to consider themselves as passing upon the affairs 
of Europe in detail. A curious illustration of this is seen 
in the statement of Joseph W. Folk with reference to the 
unjust treatment of Egypt by Great Britain. Daniel F. 
Cohalan, Frank P. Walsh, and others, equally judicial, advised 
the members of the committee as to the proper treatment 
of the Irish question. American representatives of Italy, 
Japan, China, Hungary, and the other complaining peoples 
were heard, exactly as if nothing had been done by the 
various nations represented at Paris. Former friends of 
Wilson who had broken with him, racial leaders with deep 



394 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

grievances, everyone who offered a means of attacking the 
President was cheerfully heard. Never has a Senate com- 
mittee on foreign relations acted quite in the spirit shown 
by this investigation. 

From September 15 to October 20, 1919, the members of the 
Senate went through the form of reading the treaty. The 
amendments offered were rejected, including those that pro- 
posed to reject the Shantung award and the so-called six 
votes of Great Britain. It required two thirds of the 
votes to adopt the treaty but amendments were proposed 
upon mere majorities. One third of the body might 
defeat the treaty, but a majority of the members might 
offer amendments and submit them to the President and the 
country. While the senators learned from these proceedings 
how the body would finally stand, they also began to receive 
more and more unfavourable news from the people. The 
tide was beginning to turn against Wilson, On November 6, 
Senator Lodge offered his fourteen reservations, artfully 
expanded to the number fourteen in order to bring the 
Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, into ridicule. Thirteen 
of these were adopted by fair majorities.^ 

There was nothing of importance in these formal reserva- 
tions except in numbers 2, 6, 7, 10, and 13. In these the 
Senate proposed to deny the support of the United States 
in maintaining against aggression the boundaries fixed 
in the treaty. This position of the leaders of the opposition 
was unprecedented, for in every treaty ever entered into by 
the United States the boundaries of the parties concerned 
had been duly recognized. And in most political treaties 
known to modern history all parties concerned have agreed to 
recognize and maintain the integrity of the signatory countries. 
The Wilson league only made the recognition universal, 

»"The American Yearbook," 1919. pp. 11-12. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 395 

since the league itself was to be universal. In number six 
the Shantung award was repudiated. In seven the Senate 
insisted that Congress, and not the President, should appoint 
American representatives on the various commissions 
operating under the League of Nations.' That was returning 
to the days of Reconstruction when Congress undertook 
to deprive the executive of its appointing power, practically 
a violation of the Federal constitution. In number ten 
the Senate reserved to the United States the privilege of 
unrestricted armaments, in case the League of Nations should 
be adopted; and in number thirteen a veiled reprimand was 
given England for accepting the German overseas possessions 
as mandatories. The debate upon the other reservations 
was merely an effort to make people believe that Wilson 
had endeavoured to abrogate the Constitution of the United 
States in drafting and signing the Treaty of Versailles. 

Wilson could not accept the amendments that I have 
analyzed without undoing the work at Paris, although he 
might have agreed to many of them. He ad\ised his friends 
in the Senate to vote against adoption. This he did on 
November 19; but on the same day Senator Knox offered a 
resolution which he proposed should be adopted as a joint 
resolution of the -two houses of Congress. In this he pro- 
posed a separate peace with Germany, and at the same time 
made plain one of the major overtures to the German groups 
in the country. It was the old, old way of politics. The 
grave situation did not for a moment moderate the purposes 
of the men who now found themselves in a privileged posi- 
tion. Senator Lodge, who in August, 1918, had waved the 
"bloody shirt" at any who might suggest a separate peace 
with Germany, now lent support to his colleague on the 

>The same senators voted for the Esch-Cummings railroad law, which provided for presi- 
dential appointment of members of the important Railway Labour Board! 



396 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

committee when he proposed the very thing that Lodge him- 
self had denounced the preceding year.^ Congress adjourned 
for a few days to consult their constituents and contrive 
further moves for the next session. 

When Congress reconvened, all the forces in the opposition 
showed their growing confidence that their leaders in the 
Senate would win, that the people approved this sort of 
senatorial conduct, including the Newberry case. Thus 
far Republicans like Hughes, Taft, Lyman Abbott, and 
Elihu Root continued to urge the Senate to accept the 
treaty with minor reservations. Democratic leaders out 
of Congress likewise bestirred themselves. And the Senate 
leaders finally agreed to a re-consideration of the treaty. 
The Republican organization had already shown its strength 
in its meetings of December 10 in Washington. The desire 
to enlist all phases of the party was made evident in the 
appointment of a large advisory committee. Old hners 
were in control, but Progressives were not repelled, and the 
new recruits from radicalism were given hearty welcome. 
It was no time for close questioning. Hatred of Wilson 
was the password, the only test of loyalty. When the 
debate on the treaty re-opened, the irreconcilables showed 
themselves more irreconcilable than ever. The Lodge 
reservations were re-offered and somewhat modified. But 
the Democrats, not to be outdone in the appeal to racial 
blocs, now added an Irish reservation to the Lodge reserva- 
tions which declared that Ireland must be freed from British 
control and be recognized as eligible to membership in the 
League of Nations. This was promptly accepted by the 
Republicans.^ 



ir/i« P-ontm for August, 1918. 

The .Chicago "Daily News Almanac" for \9i\, 307-71, gives texts of various reservations 
&nd the votes of the Senate. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 397 

After a bitter debate the reservations were sharpened. 
Article X was made the unpardonable sin. Wilson was 
definitely told that his treaty could never pass the Senate 
and the President accepted the gage of battle, but not until 
he had sought a common ground of agreement in the so- 
called Hitchcock reservations. While the President was 
still in Paris, the Senate had passed a resolution calling 
upon him to intervene with the British Government on 
behalf of Irish independence.^ The Irish reservation in 
the list of Lodge amendments to the treaty had completed 
the answer to the demands of that element of the population. 
The Knox resolution for a separate peace with Germany, 
the bid for German-American votes, remained for strategic 
reasons in the files of the Senate Committee on Foreign 
Relations until April, 1920. Meanwhile, Stephen G. Porter, 
a member of the Pennsylvania delegation, a citizen of the 
same town with Senator Knox, introduced a resolution in the 
House which was quickly dubbed the peace resolution. 
This was passed on April 9 by a vote of 242 to 150. WTien 
this plan of making a separate peace with Germany came 
before the Senate, Knox was apparently pleased. It 
was modified to meet his wishes and passed on May 5 
upon a vote of 43 to 38. In this formal manner Congress 
now abrogated the declaration of war, abandoning the treaty 
and its signatory powers. Lodge, Borah, and nearly all 
the Republicans, who had been the loudest in their declara- 
tions that no civilized peoples should ever again have dealings 
with Germans, voted for this measure, and German leaders 
all over the country applauded their erstwhile bitter enemies. 
Men's hatred of their own president and their fears of the 
effect of four years more of Wilsonism had completely 



'June 6, 1910. The resolution passed with only one dissenting vote, that of John Sharp 
Williams of Mississippi. 



398 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

overcome all former war hatreds. Only Wilson's veto stood 
in the way of this easy way out of national obligations; Wilson 
promptly applied the veto. He said in this last word before 
the national conventions gathered to shape their platforms, 
"Such a peace is, or ought to be, inconceivable; it is incon- 
sistent with the dignity of the United States. ""^ 

Wilson was now made to appear the only obstacle to 
peace. A few days later he was declared by the Republicans 
in formal convention to have "kept us out of war arid then 
kept us out of peace. "^ If one thinks to have a happy life, 
one had best never enter American politics. The whole pro- 
cedure from the refusal to investigate the Newberry case 
to the passing of the Knox peace resolution was politics 
in the strictly American sense. It was simply a prolonged 
series of manoeuvres designed first to delay matters, second 
to complete the "education" of the people of the North, and 
then, and above all else, to destroy the work and the prestige 
of Woodrow Wilson. It was clear to any close observer of 
events, as the great national conventions prepared for their 
quadrennial stage-play, that the leaders of the Senate had 
accomplished all three of their objectives, at least for some 
years to come. They had outmanoeuvred the Democrats 
in the Newberry issue, outmanoeuvred them in the handling 
of the treaty, and, before the first of May, they had made 
Democrats everywhere ashamed of the greatest man they 
had ever placed in the Wliite House. That was a presage of 
victory — such a victory as Thaddeus Stevens won over Lin- 
coln in the fight about Reconstruction, a victory that few 
Republicans are now willing to mention. 

iThis was Written on May 27, 1920. It will be found along with the essential facts of these 
proceedings in Congress in the Chicago "Daily News Almanac" for 1921, pp. 372-375. The 
Congressional Record tor March, April, and May gives the material amidst a haystack of 
irrelevant data. 

»"The Republican Text-Book," 1920, p. 31. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 399 

In the face of all this cleverness, Wilson lay ill, even 
desperately ill, in the White House. Nobody ever proposed 
a resolution of sympathy in either house of Congress. No 
state legislature had the courage to declare its interest in 
and admiration for a great leader by expressing to him 
warm sympathies and hearty good wishes. ^ Here and 
there some religious bodies did bethink themselves of the 
humane and kindly thing to do, although in one such gather- 
ing the feeling against Wilson was so great that a resolution 
to discontinue the customary prayers for the President of 
the United States in the services of the churches was narrowly 
defeated through the activity of one of the President's 
friends. In a well-known Chicago club the Wilson portrait, 
which had occupied a conspicuous place, was taken away 
and placed behind the door of an upper room. Five days 
before his death Colonel Roosevelt wrote to the New York 
Tribune rebuking the editor for a kindly remark about 
Wilson and saying: 

"For Heaven's sake never allude to Wilson as an idealist 
or militaire or altruist. He is a doctrinaire when he can 
be so with safety to his personal ambition, and he is always 
utterly and coldly selfish ... a cold-blooded poli- 
tician."^ A similar feeling was shown when one of the most 
prominent clergymen of Chicago leading a great non-partisan 
gathering prayed to "the God of Lincoln and McKinley 
and Roosevelt to protect and guide the fortunes of the 
country." And the depth of the feeling was noted in the 
language of a woman generally known to be of a gentle 
nature: "I rather washed that Wilson had died when he had 
that attack at Wichita." Rarely, if ever, in American 



'It is possible some Southern IcRislature did take such action. If so, the fact has escaped 
observation and research. 

^Joseph Bucklin Bishop, "Theodore RcM>scvclt and Ilis Time," II p. 470. 



400 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

history have both men and women shown such abandon 
of hatred as was visited upon Wilson.^ 

The Senate had done its work. What had Wilson been 
able to do in the way of self-defense, of national leadership 
that might save him and his work from the sabotage that I 
have described? He had "slipped" in the Shantung award, 
and in the speech of March 4, 1919, at New York. I think, too, 
that he took a mistaken view of the case when he did not 
accept some of the Lodge reservations when they were offered 
in October, 1919, the last moment when he could have com- 
promised with success. It is true that they were intended 
to be offensive to him ; but he might have accepted them and 
started the League of Nations going, and left the opposition 
to deal with railroad and industrial problems in the coming 
campaign.- The Republicans could never have come to an 
agreement as a party on these issues; they could agree only 
on one thing, their hatred for or fear of Woodrow Wilson, 
the only Democrat except Tilden that has really given the 
Republicans a scare in all their history. But Wilson thought 
the reservations dishonourable. He also thought that, if 
he agreed to reservations that were submitted, others to 
which he could not agree would immediately be offered. 
And, what is more important, he felt that the influence of 
Messrs. Taft, Hughes, Abbott, and others would really 
have weight with the Senate. Wilson still counted on a 
wholesome, patriotic public opinion in the face of the eco- 
nomic, racial, and party fears behind which his enemies were 
mobilizing. He was not sufficiently shrewd as a politician, 
and he failed in that part of the game, if one may use that 
offensive term. 



*iEvery number of Ilarrey's Weekly, The Xation, and The Seir Repvllic gave evidence of 
this spirit. 

'Of course this is aftcr-the-cvciit wisdom. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 401 

The President's industrial conference assembled early in 
October. Mr. Hoover was selected to preside. The labour, 
capital, and public groups gathered about him. It was de- 
cided that a majority of each group must favour any solution 
of the labour-capital problem in order that any progress 
be made. Labour and Capital fell at once to blows. The 
conference, after weeks of useless talk, adjourned without 
accomplishing anything. Never had Wilson's hand been 
more needed. He was too ill to give assistance. Besides, 
the great steel strike had already begun. Organized labour 
lent its hearty assistance. That gave the struggle a national 
character. It was a fight, as has been indicated, for collec- 
tive bargaining, a fight for the principle of cooperation — 
the very basis of every business corporation in the country. 
Under cover of the struggle, certain so-called labour revolu- 
tionaries did battle for labour participation in the control 
of business and talked in behalf of "sovietism," which at 
that time was not known to be so despotic as it has since 
proved to be. Here men thought they saw revolution. 
The leaders of capital called aloud for public assistance 
against the "foe of all order and all property." In Pennsyl- 
vania the right of assembly and free speech was denied 
without apology. In Ohio Governor Cox managed to 
maintain intact these honoured institutions. But where 
disorder became acute, or where it was expected that there 
would be disorder, Secretary Baker supplied troops and 
permitted quite doubtful repressions. At Gary, Indiana, 
General Wood showed his military teeth plainly enough. 
The strike, like the industrial conference, failed. A reac- 
tionary tone became evident all over the country, as it had 
already become evident in the far West and South months 
before. Labour was falling from its high estate. Its more 
conservative leaders, like Samuel Gompers, became excited. 



402 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Labour was not a bloc in the sense that racial elements were 
blocs} 

Wilson did nothing in his own name to find a way out of the 
snarl that was developing. The steel strike was still unde- 
cided when the bituminous mine workers, nmnbering some 
four hundred thousand men, decided to strike for more 
regular employment. The conditions under which the 
nation gets its coal from the earth are certainly not such as 
any advanced country ought to permit. The men now de- 
termined to improve those conditions. The operators at 
once dubbed the strike a breach of contract and a demand 
for exorbitant wages. The issue was joined about the middle 
of October, 1919. Winter was at hand. With the public 
naturally deeply concerned about its fuel and all industry 
threatened with stoppage of operations, men did not take the 
trouble to ascertain the facts. People became panicky in city 
and in the country. The mine-owners, closely tied up with 
the railroad directorates, took advantage of public opinion 
and refused any concessions that were vital to the workers. 
Men asked everywhere, "Is this the democracy for which we 
fought?" The Government was compelled to act. After 
much conferring between the departments and the former 
Fuel Administrator Garfield, then recalled to Washington, 
an appeal was sent from the President's sick bed on October 
25. It declared that the strike amounted to a "grave moral 
and legal wrong against the Government and the people of 
the United States."^ Wilson warned the strikers that the 
law would be enforced and means would be found to protect 



^Report of The Inter-Church World Movement, published in 1920, and signed by some of 
the best men in the Protestant churches, sheds a great deal of light upon the causes of the 
steel strike. 

The statement appeared in all the papers on October 26 and it will be found also in "The 
American Yearbook," 1919, p. 27. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 403 

the people. Union Labour leaders were greatly oflfended at 
the President's attitude. 

The President's usual wisdom was failing him; yet he 
could not do other than he was doing. The miners refused 
to observe the President's warning. The strike began 
on November 1, and the country was confronted with the 
serious question whether the other great labour organizations 
would support the mine workers. There was a moment when 
it seemed that the steel workers, the railway shopmen, and 
the railway brotherhoods would all, under the aegis of the 
Federation of Labour, go on strike. That would have been 
revolution, for at that time American industrial life would 
have been brought to a standstill. There were few reserves 
anywhere, not a week's supply of foodstuffs in any of the 
great cities. The jaunty attitude of the capital group in 
the recent industrial conference was now seen to have been 
another sort of fiddling even if Rome was not quite on fire. 

On October 31, Attorney-General Palmer, a Democrat 
of the Pennsylvania school of economics, obtained an in- 
junction from Judge Anderson of the United States District 
Court at Indianapolis restraining the officers of the miners' 
organization from carrying the strike into effect. The 
administration of Woodrow Wilson was applying injunction 
proceedings to labour disputes in exactly the way that Wilson 
and his party co-workers had declared unwarrantable and 
wholly wTong. Hitherto every act of the President had 
tended in the opposite direction. Leaders of labour made a 
great outcry; leaders of capital rejoiced, not so much that a 
victory was won, as that a Democratic administration 
had been brought into conflict with its natural ally in the 
industrial cities. Wilson was losing ground, although there 
was really no other ground for him to take than that which 
his most undemocratic Attorney-General was taking. No 



404 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

government can suffer any organization to bring its indus- 
trial life to a halt, even for a terrible grievance. The Fede- 
ration of Labour, however, declared on November 9, "The 
autocratic action of our government in these proceedings 
is of such a nature that it staggers the human mind." 

The government held its ground firmly, maintaining that 
the Lever war-time act justified its position. On November 
10, the leaders of the mine workers held an all-night con- 
ference in Indianapolis, and on the next day, their spokesman, 
John L. Lewis, announced: "We will comply with the man- 
date of the court. We do it under protest. We are Ameri- 
cans. We cannot fight our government."^ The strike 
was oflBcially ended, but the men did not go back to work 
until a compromise was worked out by the President a month 
later. The outcome satisfied nobody. Labour was sore; 
the general public had had a glimpse of the precipice it might 
another day stumble over; radical elements whose spokesmen 
had denounced Wilson ever since he failed to exercise the 
autocrat's hand in Paris now shrieked at the "cowardly 
surrender" of Lewis, at the autocratic conduct of the Presi- 
dent.^ 

As if these were not troubles enough, Attorney-General 
Palmer plunged more deeply into a campaign against radical- 
ism. There were some thousands of foreigners in the 
country who were seeking to induce American labour organi- 
zations to declare war upon all employers and precipitate 
a so-called soviet revolution. There were quite as many 
Americans of native birth who felt that the economic system 
stood in dire need of thorough-going reform. The leaders 
of these groups made use of the general nervousness of the 
country and particularly of the strikes to urge the revolution 

•Summary in "The American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 26-28. 
TAe Nation, 110, p. 413. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 40o 

they desired. A few men doubtless preached actual resist- 
ance to law; they preached direct-action. But the vast 
majority even of the foreigners advised only peaceful revo- 
lution, which it is the right of every American to advocate, 
since the country recognizes revolution as one of the cardinal 
principles of its citizenship. Attorney-General Palmer re- 
ported that there were about three hundred newspapers, 
published in foreign languages, engaged in the agitation. 
In so far as the editors of these papers were naturalized or 
native-born citizens there was no remedy, save in the regular 
courts — and American courts require overt acts as proof of 
treasonable intentions. 

With the others it was different. The Federal laws of 
1907, 1917, and 1918 gave authority to expel all foreigners 
that agitate against the laws and the constitutions of the 
country. Under these laws the Attorney-General proceeded 
to "round up the reds" in all the great cities. He even 
employed provocative agents.^ Thousands were cast into 
prison without due process of law and when there was really 
no evidence against them. 

Thousands of helpless foreigners were seized, first and last, 
and treated in some cases with a cruelty that put to shame 
the warmest friends of the President. The jails were unequal 
to the accommodation of these people. There can be no 
doubt that the majority of the people of the country were 
pleased at the strenuous patriotism of the Attorney-General. 
When, on December 21, 1919, a shipload of the "reds" 
was hastened off to Russia there was great newspaper 
rejoicing.^ Historians could not avoid thinking of those 

>The New York Timeg, January 3, 1920. 

'C. M. Pannucio, "The Deportation Cases," and^Zachaiy Chafee, "Freedom of Speech," 
Chapter V, give full and excellent accounts of these activities of the Attorney-General; 
but readers of this work need to be .varneJ against its narrow and unphilosophieal character. 



406 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

other shiploads of aUens that John Adams and his reaction- 
ary party friends had packed off to France in 1799, and of the 
consequences to all concerned. But for the more cautious 
restraints put upon the Attorney-General by the Department 
of Labour, whose business it was, under the law, to pass 
upon the guilt of persons arrested as dangerous aliens, still 
other shiploads would probably have been sent away. The 
Attorney-General considered his work most popular. Upon 
the basis of it, he launched a presidential "boom" which 
did not collapse until it did the President infinite mischief 
at the Democratic national convention at San Francisco. 
Although Congress refused to lend assistance to the Attorney, 
General when he asked for the strengthening of the alien laws, 
it did cite Louis F. Post, Assistant Secretary of Labour, to 
appear before a committee of the House to defend himself 
against impeachment charges on the ground that he had 
been too lenient with the "reds." Post made his opponents 
appear cheap indeed before his examination was finished.^ 
Wise men were thankful for Louis F. Post. 

At the moment that Attorney-General Palmer was pressing 
his programme of alien arrests, the Secretary of State, egged on 
by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Re- 
lations, saw fit to entangle the Government in its diplomatic 
relations with Mexico to such an extent that war was looked to 
as the only escape. For seven years Wilson had borne pa- 
tiently the ills of the Mexican situation in the hope that the 
people of that country would finally prove competent to 
manage their own affairs. He considered it an imperative 
duty not to intervene on behalf of speculative ventures in 
Mexico. In October Consular agent William O. Jenkins 
at Pueblo, Mexico, was seized by bandits. He and certain 
friends agreed to pay a huge ransom. But the case took 

^The New Republic, vol., 11, p. ?0-t. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 407 

another turn when Jenkins was shown by the Mexican 
courts to have conspired with the bandits in order, it was 
charged, to bring about American intervention. At this 
stage Secretary Lansing summarily demanded the release 
of Jenkins from Mexican authority, regardless of the evi- 
dence. A strong group in the Senate, headed by Senator 
Fall, commonly reported to be deeply interested in Mexican 
speculations, now lent Secretary Lansing all the support they 
could cormnand. It looked at the end of November as if 
the Wilson administration would, after all, become involved 
in a war with Mexico. But the reply of the Mexican Govern- 
ment of November 28 was so complete and so crushing 
that it took only a short word from Wilson to put an end to 
the untoward business.^ 

The President's intervention undoubtedly prevented war 
at the critical moment. But the President was not quite 
aware of the seriousness of the situation. In other matters 
the Cabinet went its way, or proved so divided that it did noth- 
ing. Finally, on February 7, 1920, Wilson, clearly exasperated 
at the many untoward events and a very sick man besides, 
took steps to rid himself of Secretary Lansing. Contrary 
to the charges of stubborn wilfulness on the part of the 
President, he had always been so long-suffering with members 
of his official family that he hardly knew how to proceed.^ 
Secretary Lansing had opposed the President in the most 
important parts of his foreign policy. Yet he continued in 
office. Wilson was not the man to dismiss him. The 
relations of the two men became strained to the limit, yet 
there was no resignation. For months Secretary Lansing 
did not see the President, and papers submitted to the Presi- 
dent by the Secretary were returned with such comment 

» "The American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 120-122. 

'Secretary Lansing's "The Peace Negotiations," Ch. I, m.-ikes this very plain. 



408 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

upon them that few others would have remained a day In 
office.^ But Lansing did not retire. The Bulhtt matter 
of the preceding September had been sufficient, but that 
was passed. The Mexican break of the Secretary was 
sufficient, but that led to no action on Wilson's part. Now 
Wilson asked for an explanation of the Secretary's conduct 
in calling the Cabinet together for the consideration of urgent 
matters. Lansing replied with dignity on February 9. Two 
days later Wilson wrote somewhat more of the real reasons 
why the two men should part company, namely, the long- 
continued opposition of the Secretary of State to his chief. 
But resignation was not asked on that ground so much as for 
the reason stated above. On the 12th Lansing gave up office, 
and the correspondence was given to the public at the in- 
stance of the President. The country hardly knew how to 
take it. All who had observed closely had long realized the 
necessity of the change in the State Department; but none 
could explain the reasons which the President gave on any 
other ground than illness and long-pent-up exasperation.^ 

Illness was doubtless the cause of a great deal that had 
happened. But that did not prevent the case appearing 
very serious. A great liberal statesman, one of the foremost, 
I can not help thinking, ever produced in the United 
States, was approaching a trial of strength with a group 
of the cleverest, although surely not the ablest, politicians 
that ever occupied seats in the Senate. As he approached 
the critical day and when the interests of all the world were 
still bound up in the case, ill luck fixed upon his shoulders 
burden after burden too hea\'y to be borne. The industrial 
conference had failed. The steel strike set the country at 



'This is the opinion of a person who saw these annotations. 

*The correspondence is given verbatim in the Chicago "Daily News Almanac" for 1921, 
pp. 394-395. 



POLITICAL SABOTAGE 409 

daggers drawn. The miners' strike scared men beyond 
precedent. Attorney-General Palmer put his drastic meas- 
ures into effect, and claimed the President's favour in his 
succeeding campaign for the presidency itself. Then Mr. 
Lansing brought the country to the brink of an intervention 
that must have turned all things upside down. And the 
President himself put his own worst foot foremost by the 
manner in which he dismissed Lansing, thus making an or- 
dinary man appear a national hero. And now, as the na- 
tional conventions were about to gather, there was no 
single national figure who symbolized the Wilson ideals, ex- 
cept Mr. McAdoo, who was the President's son-in-law and 
who, therefore, could not receive even the least support from 
the Administration. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 

THE country was the open field of the contesting parties. 
The people must themselves decide whether they preferred 
the country to lead in world affairs and quickly restore the 
political and economic life of all peoples, as the sustaining 
of Wilson plainly meant, or whether they preferred to follow 
the methods of the Senate and take a long chance at eco- 
nomic chaos for some years to come. It was indeed "a great 
and solemn referendum," a test of the intelligence of common 
men. 

The Democratic party was Wilson's only means of bring- 
ing the case before the voters. Its national organization 
was Wilsonian while the leading state organizations were 
opposed to him. In Georgia, Hoke Smith and Thomas 
Watson united their negro- and Catholic-baiting organiza- 
tions to defeat the President's progranmie. In Alabama 
there was no enthusiasm for the "new freedom." The 
New York Democracy was then as ever opposed to any 
Democratic leader who could carry the country. The 
Tammany leaders had fought to the knife Tilden and Cleve- 
land and Wilson. They had not in forty years favoured a 
candidate who won or had any real chance of winning. In 
Massachusetts, Senator Walsh rivalled Lodge in chasing the 
Irish, Italian, and German vote. Thomas Taggart of 
Indiana and George Brennan of Illinois were only smaller 
Tammany politicians seeking to undo the only man who 

410 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 411 

had given the Democratic Party a real standing in the coun- 
try. In Missouri, Senator Reed sought to be returned as a 
delegate to the Democratic national convention, simply 
for the purpose of fighting Wilson. It was the old case of 
the undemocratic elements of the party trying to compel 
reluctant constituencies to nominate men who were re- 
actionary in principle or anti-American in purpose. Wilson 
was in the position that every successful leader of the Demo- 
cratic Party has been since the close of the Civil War: he 
must fight even for endorsement at the hands of his own 
followers.^ 

Nor was it merely the reactionary and the more corrupt 
elements of the party that opposed Wilson. From the day 
that Bryan left the cabinet in 1915, that leader had not been 
entirely contented. Although he had done much on behalf 
of the reelection of Wilson in 1916 when the slogan was 
"He kept us out of war," Bryan took the undemocratic 
attitude when he urged W^ilson to save the Monroe Doctrine 
at Paris.- Although Bryan had himself been slow to adopt 
the cause of national prohibition, he was now understood 
to be very angry because Wilson was similarly slow and 
had vetoed the Volstead bill. Of course the so-called wets 
in the Democratic Party made use of Wilson's position. 
Governor Edwards of New Jersey imagined himself a na- 
tional leader because he had carried that state upon an anti- 
prohibition platform, and Murphy, Taggart, and Brennan 
toyed with the Governor of New Jersey. Bryan assumed 
that Wilson was in some sort of connivance with his own 
worst enemies and set himself the task of saving the party 



'Charles E. Merriam, "American Political Parties," Chapter I, gives a keen analysis of 
party make-ups in the United States. 

'The Monroe Doctrine, instead of being what it was in 1823, is now a cover for imperialistic 
and autocratic designs against the very countries it was designed to protect. Supra, p. 332. 



412 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and the country from the sinister combination, almost 
denouncing Wilson, the chief of his own, the liberal wing 
of the party. 

It was a more difficult situation than either Tilden or Cleve- 
land had been confronted with. In the hope of ironing 
out the difficulties, Wilson entertained the chairman and 
the other members of the Democratic National Committee 
at the White House on May 31, 1920. Homer S. Cummings 
received the President's instructions, which were to the 
effect that the Administration had no candidate for the 
nomination to be made at San Francisco, but that the Presi- 
dent wished an unqualified endorsement of his work and espe- 
cially of the idea of the League of Nations. A party leader 
could not ask less. Wilson could not ask more, for there was 
no candidate, other than Mr. McAdoo, w^ho represented 
his views. All party workers think ever of the candidate 
and little of the phrases of a platform. The President really 
had no hold upon any wing of the party, since he had no 
candidate, except the hold which high moral purpose might 
give him. 

Cummings journeyed to San Francisco betimes in the hope 
of securing for the President whatever advantages he might 
win by early and careful work. But Cummings was himself 
an idealist, a weak quality perhaps in the manager of a 
complex organization. A few days later the leaders of 
Tammany and of the Indiana and the Illinois machines met 
in a preliminary conference at French Lick Springs. They 
concerted plans to save the party from Wilsonism, women, 
and "dry rot," as they sometimes described the prohibition 
movement. While the bosses planned at French Lick, 
Mr. McAdoo, whose candidacy had shown great strength, 
declared that he was not a candidate and that no one should 
offer his name to the convention. It was a strange turn. 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 413 

Wilson could not be a candidate at a time when his name 
meant more than that of any other American whatsoever. 
Tradition prevented that; his health prohibited it. McAdoo, 
his political heir, was his son-in-law, and if he were an active 
candidate he could not be elected. In no other country 
in the world are there so many taboos as in the United 
States, and all the taboos seemed to be focussed upon the 
Democratic doings at San Francisco. The greatest leader 
since Lincoln and the greatest cause since that which Lincoln 
represented were now in the weakest position one may im- 
agine; and that at the moment when the opposition was most 
desperate, actually engaged daily in pure political sabotage. 
^^^len the Democratic convention gathered at San Fran- 
cisco Mr. Cummings, the chairman of the National Committee 
and spokesman of the President, delivered what is called 
the keynote speech, an exception to the rule in that it was 
really a creditable and even able statement of the case for 
the Administration. The one important note that was 
struck and sounded at intervals throughout the address 
was the foreign policy of the President, the need of adopting 
that policy and the dangers that were likely to follow its 
rejection by the people. "^ A prompt response of the con- 
vention to the "keynote" was a telegram to Wilson lauding 
his great domestic policy, the progressive reforms of his 
seven "momentous years," and expressing joy at the Presi- 
dent's recovery of his health and vigour. There was no 
mention of the League of Nations. To this Wilson replied 
in vigorous language in which there was mention of little 
else than the League of Nations, He and his friends insisted 
upon strong and unqualified endorsement of the League of 
Nations and the treaty. They could not, as I have pointed 
out, suggest a candidate, which gave to the opponents of the 

'The Chicago "Daily News Almanac" for 1921, p. 224. 



414 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

President the opportunity they wished. They could readily 
endorse in general all that Wilson had done, including his 
work at Paris, and then proceed to nominate a candidate 
who was either opposed or indifferent to the principles en- 
dorsed. That is the politician's way. 

The bosses of the party were determined to nominate a wet 
candidate. Wilson was not interested particularly in that 
issue. The bosses were also bent upon setting up a leader 
who would be as unlike Wilson as possible, one who would 
"take orders," as a prominent spokesman of that element 
of the party frankly declared a little later. Mr. Bryan, 
hitherto a great figure in Democratic conventions, was a 
delegate and he wished first of all the passage of "bone-dry" 
resolutions and then a candidate who represented that idea. 
He was now as hostile to Wilson as he had been friendly in 
1916. 

It was said that he would prefer a wet candidate to 
any real friend of the President. It was a tangled situation, 
a situation that Democratic conventions often betray to 
the country. If there ever was need of a commanding leader, 
it was just then — a leader representing ideas. There was 
none. Bryan might have been such, if he had been a man 
of larger vision. Cummings might have served in that 
capacity, but he did not develop the necessary qualities. 
Attorney-General Palmer, who insisted that he wore the 
livery of the President, was in no sense a representative 
of anything Wilson ever taught. Mr, McAdoo withheld 
his own endorsement of himself and waited for the conven- 
tion to "draft" him, for it was only in that way that he 
could hope to win. It would have taken a "superman" 
to have won under these circumstances, and the country 
was ringing from end to end with the cry — "We do not wish 
any more supermen." 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 415 

It was a deadlock. Bryan alone could have broken the 
deadlock. But the only way Bryan could break it would 
have been to endorse McAdoo which would have been to 
endorse Wilson. That Bryan had apparently taken an 
oath with himself never to do. This gave the control of 
things to the bosses, the men whom Wilson had treated 
with contempt in the person of George Harvey, whom he 
had a hundred times ridiculed in his writings and ignored 
in his administration of the Government. Murphy, Taggart, 
and Brennan were in the saddle. 

The outcome was the endorsement of the Wilson policies, 
an empty tribute; the defeat of Bryan and his bone-dry 
agitation; the defeat, after a week's weary balloting, of the 
un-anchored McAdoo candidacy — mainly through the ma- 
noeuvres of the Attorney-General; and the nomination of Gov- 
ernor Cox of Ohio, the choice of the French Lick conference, 
a man at that time supposed to be indifferent to Wilson and 
the league, and the candidate of most of those delegations 
whose greatest disgust with the convention was the absence 
of the accustomed bar and its flow of liquor. Murphy, Tag- 
gart, and Brennan were happy beyond measure. Not since 
the nomination of Parker in 1904 had they won such a vic- 
tory in a convention. All the racial elements that loved drink 
were supposed to like the nominee; and large elements of those 
blocs whose spokesmen hated Wilson more than thej' loved 
beer were thought to be ready to vote the ticket. It was a 
clever move. The bosses are always clever. But Democratic 
bosses that nominate candidates never elect presidents. 

It was another of those strange turns in the career of 
Woodrow Wilson that put his fortunes in the keeping of his 
bitterest enemies. It had been so in his nomination for the 
governorship of New Jersey. It was true when the election 
of 1918 gave the control of the Senate to Messrs. Lodge 



416 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

and Penrose. It had been equally true when he sat down 
at the peace table with men whose one purpose was to thwart 
and break the man who had saved them from a German 
dictatorship. Every independent and liberal-minded voter 
in the country looked upon the work of the convention and 
its nominee with doubts and fears. Would Cox submit 
to the men who had nominated him? Or would he behave 
as Wilson did in 1910, and declare that he was a free man, 
the champion of the people's cause? 

While men pondered this query, they studied and digested 
the work of the Republicans, who had gathered early in 
June to complete the plans of the Senate. In order that 
we may grasp the whole sweep and weight of the doings in 
Chicago, I must gather up the threads of the influences 
set in motion outside of the Senate and aimed at the same 
result: the breaking, the absolute and perfect breaking of 
that man who had, as the daughter of Mark Hanna declared 
on December 10, 1919, "hoodwinked us" in 1916. It was 
no small thing to have hoodwinked the heirs, political or 
personal, of Mark Hanna. A wealthy, a powerful, and a 
socially self-conscious group is "hoodwinked" at great 
risk in a democracy. The subtle work of undoing the per- 
formance of Wilson in 1916 had been taking shape a long 
time before the gathering of the great convention in Chicago 
on June 7, 1920. 

It was begun in the creation of an atmosphere of intense 
hostility. It must not be forgotten that Wilson had never 
carried the country on a clear-cut issue in which his progres- 
sive policies were definitely understood. He has more than 
once said that the people never purposely elected him their 
leader, yet he always contended that the great majority 
of the people favoured the ideas he advocated. Now, in 
the spring of 1920, they must be made to think of him as an 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 417 

enemy of the people. The preparation to that end began 
when Senator Chamberlain, on December 12, 1017, declared 
before 1,800 selected diners of New York City that Wilson's 
administration had broken down at every point. Chamber- 
lain was one of those Democrats who early became the in- 
struments of Wilson's enemies.^ From that time onward 
the work of creating an atmosphere was led by Colonel 
Roosevelt, who spoke generally through the Metropolitan 
Magazine of New York and the Kansas City Star. In these 
papers the ex-president published statements that indicated 
hatred as deep as any that American politics has ever 
generated. 

In the late summer of 1918 a new recruit was found. 
From the break between Wilson and Colonel George Harvey 
in 1912 that editor-agitator had found different ways to 
attack his former friend. But now Colonel Roosevelt 
met Colonel Harvey. They had been the bitterest of 
enemies in 1910-1912. They now made their peace; and 
Harvey decided to publish Harvey s Weekly. It was only 
a short while before the new sheet appeared. It continued 
its work until its editor became the ambassador of the 
United States at the Court of St. James's in May, 1921. A 
Republican paper said on May 7, 1921: ''Harvey's Weekly 
has ceased publication. In the language of the open market 
places it was a rip-snorter and a humdinger, the child of a 
brain never equalled in American journalism for passionate 
and unrestrained invective."^ 

Passionate and unrestrained invective was the note of 
the campaign. But Colonel Harvey was excelled in tliese 
arts by a predecessor, one James T. Callender, who slandered 
Jefferson to aid Washington's friends in 1801. Unlike 

^Supra, 258-260. 

^The Cbif ago Journal of Commerce. 



418 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

the present-day author of "invective," Callender was not 
appointed ambassador to Great Britain. In that strange 
age, poor Callender failed to receive a postmastership, 
and, showing perhaps a penitent spirit, he got himself 
drowned in the James River. This closed that chapter 
of our history. Colonel Harvey was more lucky; his periodi- 
cal became one of the principal organs of the Republican 
Party, and its editor sat in at the nomination of the Re- 
Publican candidate.^ 

In May preceding Roosevelt and Taft met in a Chicago 
hotel and were publicly reconciled. Later they published 
a joint attack on Wilson which received nation-wide atten- 
tion.^ It was a part of the new atmosphere. All elements 
and all factions would unite in the presence of a dangerous 
foe. Still other recruits volunteered for the cause. TJie 
New Republic, whose friendship had at one time been 
freely bestowed upon Wilson, now and later published 
the cleverest attacks on their natural leader, including 
chapters of John Maynard Keynes's book on the peace 
conference.^ The editors of The Nation, who could not have 
felt any love for their new companions, joined the hue and 
cry against the President and even declared: "It is impossible 
to withhold from Senator Lodge a certain reluctant admira- 
tion for the calm and clever way in which he has conducted 
his campaign."* 

The editors of these periodicals and their friends, being 
genuine if unphilosophical liberals, could not directly ally 

'Joseph Bucklin Bishop, "Theodore Roosevelt and His Time," II, p. 4-17. 

^ne can not forget that John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, enemies for many years, 
fell into each other's arms in the fight against Jackson; that Martin van Bu en and Lewis Cass, 
equally hostile, united heart and soul to fight Scott, (our years after Van Buren had disrupted 
the Democratic Party in order to defeat Cass. 

^The New Republic, December 24, 1919. 

*T}ir Xation, November 15, 1919. 



i 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 419 

themselves with the stalwart Republicans. But they con- 
tributed a great deal to the embitterraent of public feeling 
against Wilson, They sneered at him; they called him a 
traitor to his own cause and they organized what was called 
"The Committee of Forty-Eight." Ignoring the great 
fact that the peoples of all the allied countries had given 
overwhelming votes for a cruel and an impossible peace 
and that Wilson represented a minority of the United States, 
they now sought to carry the country in a protest vote against 
the very thing the country apparently favoured, reaction. 
The Committee of Forty-Eight drew to itself Amos Pinchot, 
a leader of the militant Progressives of 1912, Dudley Field 
Malone, an ardent Irishman and former enthusiastic cham- 
pion of Wilson, and Herbert S. Bigelow of Ohio, an excellent 
man but an extreme idealist. There were many others, and 
among them the cleanest and purest men of the time, not 
unlike the men who gathered about John G. Birney in 
the abolitionist movement of 1840. Robert M. LaFoUette, 
a tried politician, who could "swing" the German and 
Swedish vote, was their first choice for President. Henry 
Ford, who would appeal to a like constituency, was second 
choice. Such a nomination might indeed have proved 
to be very effective, for it would have won those very un- 
assimilated elements in the country that did, after all, give 
Wilson his cony de grace. But the leaders of the movement 
were too ambitious. They effected an alliance with the 
radical wing of the American Federation of Labour, led 
by John P. Fitzpatrick of Chicago. When the coalition 
met at the Morrison hotel in Chicago, July 9-15, 1920, the 
Labour men took control and adopted a platform too radical 
for the originators of the movement. At the same time 
representatives of the Non-Partisan League, an organization 
of the Northwest aimed at the grain merchants and other 



420 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

exploiters of the farmers, gathered in Carmen's Hall, 
Chicago.^ 

After much negotiation, all these elements fused into what 
was called the Farmer-Labour party, w'hich nominated 
Parley P. Christensen for President, after the Committee 
of Forty-Eight had practically abdicated and both LaFollette 
and Ford had refused the nomination. If ever there was a 
time when a third party was apt to fail, it was in the sodden 
reaction of 1920, when everybody was returning to the sa- 
voury flesh-pots of national selfishness. All that the move- 
ment accomplished was the drawing away from Wilson of 
the more idealistic support that would naturally have been 
given to him, perhaps the hastening of the pace of the 
Germans and the Irish into the camp of the Senate reaction- 
aries. 

But the pace of the various racial blocs hardly needed 
hastening. William Randolph Hearst was doing all that 
red ink and white paper could be made to do in that cause.^ 
Mayor William Hale Thompson of Chicago had suc- 
ceeded admirably in doing what the Democrats had 
tried to do in their campaign for the mayoralty in 
1917, that is, he showed men how to combine all racial 
groups into a solid phalanx. Senators Borah, Johnson, 
and McCormick, as I have indicated, toured the states 
where foreign voters are numerous, in opposition to Wilson 
in September, 1919. No amateur Committee of Forty- 
Eight could keep pace with these tried politicians, aided as 
they were in 1920 by Senators Reed, Gerry of Rhode Island, 
Walsh of Massachusetts, and Shields of Tennessee. They 
were clever enough to win the published approval of the 



*The Chicago "Daily News Almanac," lOtl, p. 229. 

'I will not cite particular editions of these papers. Every number of the Chicago Herald- 
Examiner for those months offers proof. 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 421 

leaders of the Committee of Forty-Eight and thus take the 
very ground from under the feet of that organization. 
Thompson could not hope to compete with Senator Johnson. 
He joined forces with him, and the California leader became 
one of the formidable candidates for the nomination of the 
Republican, convention. It was a lively campaign, and the 
enor.mous crowds that flocked to the Johnson meetings in all 
the Northern states frightened the real Senate leaders. 
The ally of Mr. Lodge, who had the special task of taking 
care of the foreign elements, was about to take the front of 
the stage. If Johnson had become the nominee of the Repub- 
licans, the Democratic candidate would probably have been 
the next President. Creating an atmosphere of bitter 
racial hostility was a dangerous business. When the Re- 
publican national convention met in Chicago there was great 
uneasiness. The work had been done too well. 

One of the calamities of the Republican management 
outside of Congress was the death of Colonel Roosevelt 
early in January, 1919. It was thought that he could unite 
all factions of the party, including the Germans and the 
Irish. His removal from the scene left Senator Johnson, 
the running mate of Roosevelt in 1912, apparently the politi- 
cal heir of the "rough rider"; and Johnson, as I have just 
pointed out, was taking the very centre of the stage. This fact 
lent great importance to the candidacy of General Leonard 
Wood, who also claimed to be the Roosevelt legatee. Wood 
was as unHke Johnson as Wilson was unlike Hearst. The 
general believed in strong-arm methods. He would have 
the youth of the country committed to military training 
camps all over the land during a certain part of their lives. 
He would make the United States the new Germany, armed 
to the teeth for "self-protection." He would have no 
more industrial disturbances. His candidacy was supported 



422 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

loudly by the members of the Roosevelt family. And, 
strangely, William C. Procter of Cincinnati, the soap manu- 
facturer, who had brought Wilson his first setbacks at Prince- 
ton, was the financial backer of Wood, to the extent of more 
than half a million dollars. Altogether, Wood's managers 
spent more than two millions in the campaign for instructed 
delegations to the convention. ^ But if Wood secured the 
nomination, the Republicans would probably be defeated. 

The next aspirant for the nomination was Governor 
Lowden, an eflBcient war governor of Illinois. Lowden 
was the son-in-law of the former president of the Pullman 
Car Company and reputed to command many millions 
of wealth. He made a lively campaign in the Middle West 
and it seemed that the Governor of Illinois would be the 
nominee of the party, until it was learned that Lowden's 
representatives had made too free use of money in securing 
the votes of the Missouri delegation in the coming conven- 
tion. Thirty or forty thousand dollars were paid for the 
promise of support. While this was not a new thing in 
American politics, the knowledge of it came at a moment 
when Lowden was at the very crest of his tide of success. 
It made his nomination as dangerous as that of Johnson or 
Wood. Three eminent Republican leaders were thus seen 
to be dangerous men when considered from the standpoint 
of defeating Wilson, at that time feared as one who was 
clever enough to profit from all the mistakes of his opponents. 
The nomination of any of the men who had the greatest 
number of instructed delegates to the convention would have 
caused the defeat of the Senate leaders; and all the long 
and bitter work of two years would be lost. Wilson would 
again "hoodwink" the Republicans, and the work at Paris 
would be endorsed. 

»The Chicago Tribune, June 2, 19-20. 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 423 

With the country anxious and excited, the various delega- 
tions gathered in Chicago the first week in June. The 
RepubUcan National Committee, under the leadership of 
Will H. Hays, did not risk any purging of the delegations. 
The atmosphere about the Coliseum favoured Johnson. 
The mayor of the city placed Johnson police in charge. 
But the well-to-do elements of the city favoured either Wood 
or Lowden. Cardinal Gibbons was made one of the chap- 
lains. A great Irish parade made demonstrations in favour 
of Johnson. The Germans were less conspicuous but more 
influential. They favoured Johnson; and Johnson himself 
took the town by storm after the manner of Roosevelt in 
1912. He attended in person and held a vociferous meeting 
in Orchestra Hall. But other influences were evident. All 
the great houses were thrown open, after the manner of 
Charleston in 1860. The Armours entertained Theodore 
Roosevelt, Jr., and other friends of General Wood. Mrs. 
Marshall Field likewise entertained distinguished delegates 
and visitors. Mr. Kellogg Fairbanks entertained his Re- 
publican friends while Mrs. Fairbanks kept open house to 
Democratic onlookers. At the Blackstone Hotel, Cornelius 
Vanderbilt, E. H. Gary, Frank A. Vanderlip, Henry W. Taft, 
and George H. Perkins jostled each other in corridors and 
lobbies and lent counsel to those who would help them make 
an end of "this Wilson."^ Never in the history of national 
conventions were there quite so many wealthy and powerful 
men present and intensely earnest and active. The first 
thing was to defeat Johnson. After that the breach must 
be healed and the right man nominated. A grievous error 
might easily be made. 



'The Chicago Tribune, June 5, lfl'20. "Make an end of this Wilson" was a pithy sentence 
one might hear any moment in the hotels or in the corridors of the convention hall. This was 
the least violent of the expressions that came to the aOthor's ears. 



424 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

When the convention opened, Senator Lodge came 
promptly forward and read the "keynote." An eminent 
historian has called it a hymn of hate. It was simply a 
denunciation of the President and all his works. In that all 
the delegations could agree and great shouts rent the hot air 
of the hall. In the pause that came while committees were 
preparing reports and the managers were finding decent 
ways to do things, as conventions ever must do, the tone 
of the body was indicated by the warm welcome that was 
given to Chauncey M. Depew, the ally and co-worker of 
Thomas Collier Piatt of happier days; he spoke with un- 
wonted zest to the delegates and the newspaper men. It 
was a good organization that knit together the threads 
of power. Fred W. Upham of Chicago was the treasurer 
of the National Committee. Boies Penrose, although ill at 
his home in Pennsylvania, was present in spirit and consulted 
by wire every day. William H, Crocker, of Central Pacific 
fame, was a Johnson leader and a personal guarantee that 
the California delegation would not break up the convention 
if Johnson were not nominated. Bascom Slemp, the master 
of coal and iron in Virginia and West Virginia, was omni- 
present and protesting against the reactionary and wicked 
South. John W. Weeks, the heir of W. Murray Crane, repre- 
sented Massachusetts. It was certainly a safe convention. 

When the platform was ready, it was seen to contain 
nothing that offended Borah and Johnson; it condemned the 
League of Nations as it did everything else Wilson had done 
or permitted to be done. It endorsed, of course, all the work 
of the Senate leaders during the preceding year and a half. 
But Borah announced that a bolt would follow the nomi- 
nation of Wood or Lowden, and the mayor of Chicago resigned 
his seat in the convention as a delegate from Illinois, rather 
than cast a vote for Lowden according to instructions. These 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 425 

were the guarantees that there would be no break- 
up. Johnson was to be defeated, because no one could 
stampede the convention to him, and the leaders from 
Washington had already decided that neither Wood nor 
Lowden should be nominated. The hopes of the Demo- 
crats, especially of those who believed in the Wilson policies, 
were pretty well blasted, although their convention had not 
met. The work of preparing the country had been success- 
ful, and the factions of the Republicans were for the moment 
fused. This became very evident on Friday, June 11, when 
Wood, Lowden, and Johnson were shown to be losing can- 
didates; that is, neither of them could break the deadlock. 
At two o'clock Friday night a conference of the Senate 
leaders, the men who really steered the convention — Messrs. 
Lodge, Wadsworth, Watson, New, and Smoot — was held in 
the Blackstone Hotel in the rooms of Colonel George Harvey.^ 
From the account which the editor of Harvey's Weekly gave 
to the press, he had a good deal to do with the naming of 
the successful candidate, Warren G. Harding. Senator 
McCormick, by no means a radical, was reported to be the 
"go-between" who made known to Messrs. Johnson and 
Borah the decisions of the Blackstone conference.^ When 
it became evident that Johnson would not bolt, Mr, Harding 
was brought into the presence, looked over solemnly — 
Colonel Harvey tells us — and in due time informed that the 
nomination on the following day would be his. That was the 
programme that had been planned weeks before in Washing- 
ton. Those who were in the confidence of the Senate group 
reported in Chicago a month before the convention met that 
Harding was to be the nominee. The writer received this 
information early in May. Delegates from the LaFollette 

' Chicago Tribune, June 13, and Chicago Daily News, June 14. 
'The New York Times, June 12, 1920. 



426 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

camp also informed their friends on the second day of the 
convention that all the balloting in the hot pit of the gather- 
ing was useless. "It's Harding of Ohio; we know it. Why 
not?" 

It was a fit nomination, an outcome in perfect harmony 
with the planning of the Senate leaders and in harmony with 
the •washes of the country. Harding was no statesman; 
few men who ever reached the presidency have been states- 
men. Not long since he had said in the Senate: "Wilson 
preached revolution to the German people. That was a 
dangerous thing to do. Now we are confronted with revo- 
lution at home and there is doubt what to do about it. 
He gave a hundred millions to Europe; he would better 
consider our poor tax-payers. As for me, give me autocracy 
rather than — anarchy." By anarchy it was plain he meant 
what Patrick Henry meant when he said " liberty. "^ A 
little later, when Mr. Harding must have known that the 
Senate leaders would nominate him if possible, he said, and 
made the saying the main thought of a speech to the Ohio 
society of New York City: 

"Stabilize America first, 
Prosper America first, 
Think of America first, 
Exalt America first." 

America first is the same thing as "Deutschland tiber 
Alles" as all know who ever lived any considerable time in 
that country. That was to be the slogan which was to take 
the place of the more famous declaration: "Make the world 
safe for democracy." Besides, men were saying everywhere 
and every day: "We have had enough of supermen, we do 

*I have condensed and changed the order of the speech a little; but there is no change of 
thought. Sec the New York Times report of it, June I.'!, lO'-JO, 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 427 

not wish another intellectual in the Wliite House — just a 
plain, shirt-sleeves American," and, if this was the will of 
the country, neither Wilson nor any other Democrat could 
have any ground for complaint. The United States, both 
the states and the nation, have perfected the most elaborate 
machinery known to history designed to prevent men of 
known abilities and originality from attaining and retaining 
leadership. One must never forget that Cleveland, Roose- 
velt, and Wilson were all political miracles. At a time 
above all others in history when world relations were complex 
and ominous, the people of the United States preferred 
leaders who did not claim, either in their records or in their 
words, to know anything beyond the ken of average citizens. 
Governor Cox, whose nomination I have already reviewed, 
was like Harding in this respect; and he was like the rest 
of the country. It was democracy carried to its logical ex- 
treme. There was then no ground for complaint; and as be- 
tween the Republican and the Democratic nominees, the 
former certainly more nearly represented the common de- 
sire. 

On the morrow, Saturday, the Wood and Lowden groups 
were quietly abandoned, the Johnson forces having been 
satisfied the night before. The convention had escaped 
every pitfall. Wood's nomination would have ruined all; 
Lowden 's would have been equally dangerous; if Johnson had 
been chosen, most of the old-line Republicans would have 
bolted. And, I think, if Roosevelt had lived and been 
nominated, he, too, would have been defeated. It all depended 
uponthedelicategameof findinga Republican without political 
complexion and upon conciliating all the racial blocs, natives 
of older American stocks being mainly pro- Wilson.^ Mayor 

'This statement is based upon the study of many districts and the comment of many keen 
observers who spoke in various parts of the country. 



428 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

Thompson of Chicago had shown the country the way, and 
editor Hearst was the fit press-agent for the undertaking. 
It was all "dead certain." 

Yet a campaign must be made. The new Republican 
chief hastened his work of conciliation. He managed to 
persuade Wood and Lowden and Johnson to lend public 
assistance. Mayor Thompson visited the candidate at his 
home. Representatives of the ultra-radicals saw Harding 
at Marion, including men who urged upon him the desirabil- 
ity of imitating the Bolshevik system. The candidate 
himself said nothing, not even when President Butler of 
Columbia University, in a fit of disappointment, made pub- 
lic certain peevish remarks about the way it was all done in 
Chicago. The great press gave acres of space to the stories 
of the candidate's rise from an obscure home, of his barn- 
painting exploits, his homely ways, and his innocence of high 
society and all that "stuff." It was a hard-cider and a 
log-cabin campaign, like that in which the first Harrison 
was swept into the White House on a tidal wave; only there 
was nothing to drink. Harding was in everything the anti- 
thesis of Wilson. He was not a professor, there had been 
enough of them; he was not a great party leader, these were 
in the Senate; he was merely the editor of a small paper 
and a son of the middle border. Moreover, he conducted 
his campaign from his front porch, as McKinley had done in 
those high days when the firebrand Bryan had first been 
snuffed out. 

This gave Cox, the Democratic leader, the open field. 
Cox must not affect the "small-town stuff." Besides, his 
beautiful mansion, Trail's End, would not have looked well 
in the Sunday papers. It was a palace. Not even the noti- 
fication was given him at his home, according to custom. 
He had not built that mansion for campaign purposes. 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 429 

Cox put his better foot foremost. Although he did have 
himself pictured toiling in his hay fields for the movies, 
he could not play that game. He must actually say some- 
thing; he must be a great man despite the demand for a small 
one. The difficulty was what to say. Wilson was the 
master of all in Washington that was Democratic; he had 
set up the leadership of the Democratic National Committee; 
and he could defeat Cox, if he could not elect him. 

In this situation Cox dethroned Homer S. Cummings, and 
placed Mr. George White, a Princeton man who had never 
been known as a friend of Wilson, in charge of the campaign. 
It has lately been the habit of candidates to choose the man- 
ager of their campaigns. The next move was quite as import- 
ant. He quietly served notice that it was to be a dry and not 
a wet campaign ! He would find campaign money from other 
sources than those that could be tapped by Murphy and 
Taggart and Brennan. That was a surprise. Its effect 
was seen when the votes were counted in New York and 
Chicago, Smith of New York proving to be the star of the 
campaign. This shows some of the difficulties of a Demo- 
cratic nominee for the presidency. Only a genius or a miracle 
will suffice. 

The dismissal of Cummings angered Wilson men. The 
Governor visited the White House promptly. He received 
the blessing of Wilson. He went away preaching the Wilson 
doctrine, which only the more certainly hastened from his 
party the body of the Irish. It confirmed the Germans 
in their decision to vote against anybody who enjoyed the 
favour of the President. It angered those socialists who 
did not like to vote for a man actually in prison. They 
turned to Harding, Next Mr. Cox made a campaign across 
the country to California. On this trip he gave out in- 
formation about the slush fund which the Republican com- 



430 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

mittee was raising. But the people did not grow angry 
about slush funds. They had not been moved by the New- 
berry case. Before the tour was finished, both Cox and 
the campaign managers decided that the League of Nations, 
Wilson's idea, was after all the only issue. They would make 
of it the test in a solemn referendum; and from mid-August 
till November that was the subject. The party, having 
half-snubbed Wilson at the San Francisco convention, was 
now Wilsonian. Having toyed with the wets, it was now 
dry as a bone. But its strong-box was as empty as the 
widow's cruse. In 1920 an empty strong-box was enough 
to ruin any movement. There was some brief consolation 
in the desertion of the Republican Party by so high an official 
as Herbert Parsons of New York. Hamilton Holt, likewise 
a Republican of ancient standing, and George Foster Pea- 
body, the great banker-philanthropist, gave the Democrats 
the sense of having respectable people in their house. Then 
Morton D. Hull of Chicago published an admirable letter in 
which he modestly said that he believed the best way to 
the adoption of a wise international policy was to support 
a leader who believed in that policy, not to vote for one who 
declared against it. 

But George Harvey appeared frequently at Marion; that 
compensated for these minor Republican defections. Boies 
Penrose and Elihu Root were towers of strength at Mr. 
Harding's elbow. Mr. Hughes and Mr. Hoover also made 
week-end journeys to Marion in spite of their disagreement 
with the candidate on the League of Nations. To counter- 
act the impression made by the defection of Herbert Par- 
sons and others, Messrs. Taft, Lowell, Abbott, and thirty 
other eminent Republicans declared in a careful public 
statement that the best way to get a league of nations, 
which they heartily favoured, was to vote for a candidate 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 431 

who declared he would have none of it.^ These are char- 
acteristic American political performances. Nowhere else 
in the world would the student look for quite the same kind 
of behaviour — and indeed, the distinguished Republican pro- 
league leaders may yet prove their keener judgment of the 
men they supported. 

These little shifts and inconsistencies did not all together 
mean as much as the conduct of Mr. Bryan who, for the 
first time in his life, "sulked in his tent." He said his heart 
was buried with the dry resolutions in the grave of Demo- 
cratic hopes. But Cox turned dry. It did not affect the 
Commoner; he would have nothing to do with the Demo- 
cratic nominee, and immediately after the success of Harding, 
he supplied the country with a picture of himself and Hard- 
ing standing together on the front porch of Bryan's mansion 
in Florida! 

Bryan not only did not speak for his party; he talked to 
the last moment as if he would vote against its candidates. 
There are perhaps a million Americans who always wait to 
see what Mr. Bryan does, and then do likewise. That 
million votes may defeat any candidate, thougTi it has 
never yet elected one.^ Wilson was infinitely more in- 
fluential, but not with voters that needed prodding. On 
the last day of October he endeavoured to persuade men to 
vote for the league, that is for Cox, in a strong appeal that 
was published throughout the country. Still others, men 
whose faces had never been familiar in political campaigns, 
the college professors, took a lively part. Irving Fisher 
of Yale University headed a group of so-called intellectuals 
who travelled across the country speaking for Cox and the 



•An interesting discussion of this will be found iu the New York Timet of Octobjr 31, lO'ZO 
by Francis A. Christie. 

'It was Roosevelt who caused Wilson to be elected in 1912. 



432 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

league. A well-known historian became an official adviser 
to the Democratic National Committee. At Harvard, Yale, 
and the University of Chicago, both professors and students 
showed a remarkable drift toward the Democratic candidate. 

Perhaps that did the cause more harm than good; it 
angered many good people who have ever thought that those 
who are supposed to be wise and good are always Re- 
publicans. Business men, who think teachers must ever 
advocate the sound doctrine that no change should ever be 
made in anything, wrote: "Only a professor or an ansemic 
woman would think of Wilson as worth anything to anybody. 
You are merely another theorist with which America is 
cursed."^ It was all love's labour lost. All the racial 
blocs, including the Czecho-Slovaks whose national life 
Wilson had saved, the Poles whose ancient state he had 
done so much to restore, and the hundreds of thousands of 
negroes who had moved North to work at unheard-of wages 
in munition plants, hastened to the polls that November 
day to vote a loud No to all that Wilson had done or tried 
to do. Socialists abandoned strong party ties to support 
Harding, the natural enemy of socialism. They must throw 
some clods of earth into Wilson's grave. It was their last 
chance. 

The returns outran all prophecies. Even Tennessee voted 
for " America first." New York gave Harding a plurality of a 
million and at this same time all but elected Smith, Dem- 
ocrat, already mentioned. Maryland could not longer remain 
out of the fold. Missouri vindicated Reed by giving Harding 
a plurality unprecedented in that state. California, "the 
boob state" of 1916, wiped the slate clean of all her dis- 
honours. In Ohio, where Wilson's friends had long kept 
the flag of liberalism up, the old Hanna machine "came back" 

'One of several letters of similar import in the writer's files. 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 433 

and gave Harding a plurality of four hundred thousand. 
Pennsylvania had not gone wrong in forty years, why should 
she do so this time. Only North Carolina of all the states 
gave the Democrats an increased plurality. Virginia 
and Georgia, the states of Wilson's birth and rearing, re- 
spectively, gave grudging support. . Texas flirted with Joseph 
W. Bailey, and the Wilson forces there were, therefore, unable 
to corral all the votes for their candidates. It was not a 
landslide; it w^as an earthquake. The Democratic National 
Committee retreated from its several headquarters in un- 
timely fashion. What was the use of counting the votes? 

It was a strange thing, unless one looked beneath the 
surface to the real causes. The country had indicated what 
it would do in November, 1918. Then, after the return 
from Paris, it hesitated a moment w^hether to risk the peace 
and stability of the world in order to cast out Wilson. 
The Senate leaders were likewise in doubt till Wilson fell 
ill. They took the chance; they would let the world, includ- 
ing their own country, suffer — they must destroy Wilson. 
They offered the Knox resolution. They renewed their 
Irish propaganda. They courted, as party leaders from 
1776 to 1920 have ever courted, the various elements that 
compose the country; and they did it with consummate 
success. It was a sordid business, after the elevated tone 
of 1917-1918. It was tragic, for millions starved while 
the United States played politics, starved and held out w^eak- 
ened, bony hands for the doles of charity handed out in 
Berlin and Vienna by the same America which refused to 
give them peace and order. For, in addition to the long 
campaign for a change of administration, there was now to 
be a delay of four weary winter months when nothing could 
be done even if the world caught fire. 

Wilson waited ill and broken in the White House for his 



434 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

release. When he saw friends, he talked of Paris, Paris, 
the place where his great opponents had sought to destroy 
him; of the Senators, those statesmen who knew so well 
what they did; and of the plain people who he said 
more than once, with a confidence that was childlike, had 
merely been deceived. "What more could I have done? 
I had to negotiate at Paris with my back to the wall. Men 
thought I had all power. Would to God I had had such 
power. The 'great' people at home wrote and wired every 
day that they were against me. But we shall come back, 
return to those high levels we have abandoned. No good 
cause is ever lost. Is there anything I can do? I am still 
ready to serve. "^ 

Such is history. Let us appraise and place Wilson and 
his work: Jefferson received the electoral votes of all the 
states in 1804 except those of Massachusetts and Delaware 
and nearly all the popular votes in many states. He thought 
his American part of mankind a great, self-sacrificing mass of 
men better than Europeans or those dingy Asiatics. With 
such a mandate behind him he tried at one fell stroke to ban- 
ish war in his embargo measure of 1807 and bring war-mad 
Europe to his feet begging bread, which he would give them 
if they made peace.^ A great dream that might have been 
made a fact, if his noble Americans had obeyed his Embargo 
Law six months. But those Americans who two years before 
had sworn by his name now turned upon him, the greatest 
poet of the time winning his way to fame by a clever lampoon 
upon a president who loved the ways of peace.^ Jefferson, 
the idealist, went out of office, every man who could seizing 
"stick and shard to hurl after the bent wayfarer." And 
aged beyond his spirit and his years, he cried when he reached 

•Conversation of December 30, 1920. 

'The history of this magnificent ideal has ever been written in depreciation and jeers. 

^William Cullen Bryant's "The Kmbargo." 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 435 

his farmer neighbours at Monticello: "Whose ox have I 
stolen?" 

Abraham Lincoln, close to the end of the awful years of 
bloodshed which he hated as all great souls hate war, ofiFered 
his cabinet a plan of settlement for the broken South that 
would have spelled peace. His offer was oblivion, advance- 
ment of four hundred million dollars for slaves to be set free 
and as a help to set a prostrate people on their feet — a people 
still in arms but loved by Lincoln ! Besides, he would at once 
re-admit Southerners to Congress to help bind up the wounds 
of war — a war more terrible to men of that day than the 
great war had been to Americans in 1918. It was a great 
ideal, worthy of a great mind. The cabinet sat dumb when 
he pressed it upon them, and then he sorrowfully put his 
document away for the historian, hoping that men might 
one day know his purpose. Not a member of that cabinet 
could rise to such a height. And members of Congress, 
knowing full well the great man's greatness of soul, pressed 
ever and anon for a warlike peace. Death saved him the 
last great struggle and galling defeat which history had in 
store for him. A harsh peace was shouted aloud to an ex- 
cited country after the assassin's work was done in April, 
1865, and the way was open for men like Henry Winter 
Davis and Charles Sumner to subject the country to a cruel 
peace for twelve long and bitter years. Congress did what 
no president would have done; it was Hayes who finally 
undid the work (1877). Lincoln was saved the fate of Jeffer- 
son; his fame has covered the earth. 

Wilson, Southerner, came upon the great stage. He 
had known bitterness and poverty in youth, as becomes the 
youth of thoughtful men.^ He tried first to set our great 



iPresident Wilson said to the writer when at the height of his fame and power: "I am thank, 
ful for the poverty of my youth." 



436 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

colleges upon a democratic footing during ten stirring years 
at Princeton. There at the end he drank the bitter cup of 
defeat; American colleges did not wish to become democratic. 
And one of the last public performances of the Princeton 
presidency was to present a loving cup on behalf of the alumni 
of the college to the leader of the opposition to all his work ! 

From Princeton fate beckoned him to the presidency of 
the United States. He summoned all forward-looking 
men to his side. Great reforms, as vital to the future safety 
of men of great wealth as to the happiness of men of lesser 
degree, were quickly made into law. Never before had a 
president done so much in four short years. Yet he would 
surely have been defeated for his good work, had it not been 
for the dark and ominous figure of the German Kaiser laying 
prostrate before him the peoples of ancient Europe. Never 
had a more sinister figure appeared in history. He talked 
constantly of the shining sword, of the chains that he would 
fasten upon his victims for a hundred years to come, of the 
divine right of the German rulers. It was the Kaiser and 
the war he waged that reelected Wilson, and not the good 
will of the men his measures were serving. 

Then he turned to the world sphere and sought there to 
bring men to that reason which teaches that war never saves ; 
that it only preserves men sometimes from worse fates. 
He made a new figure in the world. His ideas of kindliness, 
of justice, self-government, freedom of commerce and 
the seas, the abandonment of armaments and that league 
of nations for which the best minds have laboured for cen- 
turies moved the thought of. all Americans. The men in the 
trenches heard his new-old gospel. The poor peasants of 
France and Italy, the tenantry of England, and the poor 
of Ireland listened to what he said and longed to realize 
his reasonable hope. The entrance of the United States 



THE BREAKING OF WOODROW WILSON 437 

into the war lifted the spirits of men everywhere. Even 
the flint-browed business men of America, with their trade 
and ships and banks rapidly dotting sea and land everywhere, 
warmed to him. They gave him their time for a dollar 
a year. But when the goal was near, they and those poor 
Germans and Irish, blinded by ancient grudges perhaps 
justly held, declared they would have none of his free seas, 
his free trade, his "millennium", as they jeeringly called his 
scheme. He yet went to Paris. There he fought "the 
beasts at Ephesus," as a neutral observer declared.^ His 
reward was a treaty that reflected the anger of nations rather 
than the forgiveness of peacemakers. His part of the work 
and its great promise was the League of Nations. 

With a heavy heart and a breaking physique he jour- 
neyed home to persuade men to undo the worse effects 
of an election they were all more or less bound by, a 
militarist's election, and help Europe once more along the 
upward way, the way of the league. While the "practical" 
men of Europe sneered and started wars anew to prove 
his work unreal, the great men of the United States said 
of him and his effort just what men had said of Jefferson 
and Lincoln, It was to be "America first." The country 
would have none of his idealism. He fell in the fight; 
his work soon began to go all awry; his name was attached 
to policies he had never in health endorsed. He was called 
"Kaiser Wilson." He was broken, soul and body, by those 
who should have helped him, and in the election sixteen 
million voters, the greatest number ever cast against any 
man, buried him and his candidate alive. The Kaiser's 
figure, with all its sinister significance, went down with 
more of the approval of his country. All this was democ- 
racy, for both men and women had the vote; and the issue 

iWilliam Allen White in The-Saturday Evening Post, August 16, 1919. 



438 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 

was known and read of all. "America first!" It is a story 
unequalled in American history, a story fit for the pen of a 
great dramatist. 

He was not able to attend the inauguration, although he did 
accompany the President-elect to the proud scene where he 
was to give earnest of what he would do. Then Wilson 
turned his way to his new home in the city. 

A broken figure disappears alone 
Down the dark roadway of the overthrown; 
Yet is there time ere fades the twilight chill 
For one more volley! Hasten ye who will 
To seize on stick and shard, and hurl them after 
The bent wayfarer! All your taunting laughter 
Will fall unanswered; naught will he hurl back 
Who plods in silence down the fated track. 

Yet let none but the perfect cast a stone! 

We, the imperfect, see the doom foreknown 

On them whose vision passes hmnan deed. 

Who, free themselves in spirit, would have freed ^ 

Mankind at one quick stroke from its old bonds 

Of greed and self that still to self responds. 

But, bred in imperfections, know we not 

That, stmnbling through the mists, the light forgot. 

Sudden we see that clouds lift from our land. 
And on its sun-lit heights again we stand! 
A mystic form, a name to intertwine 
With legends of kept faith, unbroken hope. 
And quenchless gleam on gorge and ivy slope. 

Thus Moses leading to the very door 

Of promise might not cross its threshold o'er 

Yet towers secure the leader evermore! 

M. A. DeWolf Howe in the Boston Herald, March 1. 19il. The editor apologized, 1 
ought in justice to say, for pubHshing this friendly poem. 

THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A. B. C. powers. 129; on Mexican 
problem, 147-48. 

Adams, Henry. 68; "The Education 
of," 155; "History of the United 
States," 171 

Adams, Professor Herbert B., 20, 26. 

Adamson Law, 164, 189, 190. 

Adjer, Dr. John B., 9, 14. 

Air-craft service, 238. 

Aldrich, Senator Nelson B., 77; on 
banking, 140. 

Alexanders, The, 14. 

Alsace-Lorraine, 203, 204, 301, 303, 
317. 346. 

American Commission to Paris, 393. 

American Legion, 365. 

Anglo-Saxons, 359. 

Armistice, 272, 279; released political 
truce in United States, 299; scrap 
of paper, 342. 

Army, United States, 178-79, 279; 
Bill, 236; British, 204; Regular, 
238. 

Article X, 397. 

Austria, aggressive policy in Bal- 
kans, 204; autonomy, 277; Ger- 
man, 346; great guns made, 202; 
oppressed Serbia, 150. 

Axson, Ellen, 19; Wilson married, 22. 

Axson, Stockton, 25. 

Bagehot, Walter, 30. 

Bailey, Joseph W., 96-98. 

Baker, Newton D., 126, 179, 222, 

259. 
Baker, Ray Stannard, 280. 
Balance of trade, 298. 
Balfour, Arthur, 233, 328. 
Balkan States, Germany's plan 

for, 203. 
I?allin, Hcrr, of Hamburg, 152. 



Bankhead, Senator, of Alabama, 97. 

Barnes, Senator, 101. 

Barnwell, Professor Charles Hay- 
ward, 10, 11. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 108. 

Belgium, battles, 206; invaded, 149, 
150; territory ceded to, 346. 

Bethmann-Hollweg, 216. 

Bernstorff, Johann von, 151, 165, 
214. 

Bigelow, Herbert, 3, 419. 

Bismarck, 16, 178, 344, 349. 

Blacklisting, campaign against, 172. 

Bliss, General, 285. 

Blockade, British, of Central Powers, 
157; barred trade with neutrals. 
172, 214; German propaganda 
against. 173, German submarine, 
of Britain, 174. 

Bolshevism, 225. 

Bolshevist government, 311, 335. 

Bones, Helen, 25. 

Bones, James, 5. 

Borah, Senator, 264, 350, 369, 370. 

Bosch, Herr, 344. 

Boss, power of, 110. 

Bourgeois, Leon, 316. 

Breckenridge, Robert, 13. 

Brest-Litovsk, 236, 242. 

Brewers, in German propaganda, 
173. 

Bright, John, 17. 

British, army and navy, 204; con- 
stitution, 30; debt, 305; elections, 
305; Government, 359; Labour 
party, 293; Liberalism, 31, 8.3. 
320; public affairs studied by Wil- 
son, 20; surprise at New York's 
attitude, 290. 

Brockdorff-Rantzau, Herr, 344. 

Brook?, Sidney, 124. 



441 



ui 



INDEX 



Brotherhoods of American Railway 
Men, 163. 

Brown, Ex-governor of Georgia, 97. 

Brusiloff, General Alexei, 205, 206. 

Bryan, William Jennings, "Boy 
Orator," 71, canvassed West for 
Wilson, 190; entered presidential 
race, 67; first battle, 73; House 
and Daniels friends of, 97; in- 
fluence of on Irish note, 389; 
hostile to Wilson, 414, 415; ideal- 
istic Democratic party supported 
by, 114; League constitution 
amendment, 332; opposed military 
service, 179; revived touring 
method, 71; scheme of universal 
arbitration, 133; second defeat, 
75, 79; Secretary of State, 124- 
25; resigned, 125; silver principles, 
70; single-term presidency, 170; 
third defeat, 84; Wilson voted 
for, 33. 

Bryce, James, 26-27, 52, 117, 351. 

Br>Ti MawT College, 24. 

Buchanan, Frank, 173. 

Bulgaria, joined Germans, 207. 

Bullitt, William C, 335, 393. 

Burke, Edmund, 30. 

Burleson. Albert S., 125. 

Burr, Aaron, Sr., 43. 

Business, big, influence of, 108, 122, 
144; in danger, 130; Hughes and, 
185; imperialistic policy of 1898, 
132; opinion on Germany, 153; 
opposed League of Nations, 352; 
opposed Wilson, 193. 

Cabinet, appointed, 125-26; backed 
President, 136, 181; munitions, 
260-62. 

Caillaux, Joseph, 301. 

Callender, James T., 417, 418. 

Cameron, Don, 24, 60. 

Campaign, of 1915, 179, 191; Con- 
gressional, of 1918, 261, 270; 
slogan, 183. 

Canada, 151. 

Cannon, Joseph G., 77. 

Capitalism, and Colonel Harvey, 
74; and Labour, 307; Lenine's 



message on, 236-37; problem of, 
106. 

Carnegie, Andrew, 49. 

Carranza, Venustiano, 146, 166. 

Cartel, German system, 198. 

Carson, Sir Edward, 305. 

Catholic Church, 17, 109-10, 235; 
in Mexico, 115. 

Cavell, Edith, 211. 

Cavour, 349. 

Cecil, Lord Robert, 316, 330. 

Central Powers. 277, 285, 305. 

Chamberlain, Senator George E., 
178. 258-60, 417. 

Child labour laws, 36, 69, 113, 189, 
190. 

China, 342. 

Chinese, loan, 131; Republic recog- 
nized, 135. 

Christensen, Parley P., 420. 

Civil Service, 69, 181. 

Civil war, 11; no nation till after. 
27; effect of slavery on Presby- 
terian Church, 9; reconstruction 
after, 60. 61. 

Clapp, Senator, 217. 

Clark, Champ, 95, 97, 99, 102, 221. 

Clayton Anti-trust Law. 161; ex- 
empted strikes from Federal in- 
junction, 163. 

Clemenceau, Georges, 274, 291, 293. 
300-302, 311, 340. 

Cleveland episode, 129. 

Cleveland, Grover, 31, 32, 67, 70, 
81, 124, 270. 

Coffin, Howard, 238. 

Cohalan, Justice, 323. 

Colby, Bainbridge, 190, 271. 

Committee on Foreign Relations, 
392. 

Congress, approval of, 245; Demo- 
cratic in 1913, 130; industrial dis- 
tricts represented in, 64: influence 
of bankers in, 67; methods of. 
30, 32, 35; parties in, 75; and 
President, 119, 248; refused ma- 
chinery to deal with strikes, 164; 
resisted shipping bill, 160; War, 
220-21. 

Conkliug, Roscoe, 66, 67. 



INDEX 



413 



Conservative elements, 112. 

Constitution, Federal, 36, 66, 80; 
guaranteed freedom of press. 111; 
violated, 224; Wilson and, 120 

Conventions; Baltimore, Wilson's 
support at, 98; events told by 
Arthur Howden Smith, 98; de- 
velopments of, 102; Chicago 
Republican Convention of 1912, 
100; control of Democratic, 182; 
in St. Louis, 183; "steam roller" 
of 1912, 185; deadlock of Repub- 
lican, 185; influence of German- 
American Alliance in Republican, 
192. 

Corporations, power of, 106. 

Corrupt practices bill in New Jersey, 
91. 

Council of National Defence, 196, 
230. 

Com-ts, American, 35, 36, 66, 71. 

Cox, Governor, 373, 374, 377, 401, 
415, 428, 429, 431. 

Crane, Senator, 78, 101, 110. 

Creel, George B., 223. 252. 

Croker, Richard, 88. 

Cummings, Homer S., 412, 413, 
429. 

Curtis, George William, 31, 33, 69. 

Czecho-Slovakia, 277-78. 

Daniels, Josephus, 97, 99; Secretary 
of the Navy, 125, 238; in Wilson 
campaign, 190. 

Daniels, Professor W. M., 57. 

D'Annunzio. 319, 358. 

Dardanelles, British expedition, 207. 

Davidson College, N. C, 12, 14. 

Davies, Samuel, 13, 43. 

Daviess, Joseph, 272. 

Davis, Jefferson, 11. 

Dawes, Charles G., 383. 

Daylight saving, 159. 

Debating societies, 15, 17. 

Debs, Eugene B., 224. 

Decadent nations, France and Eng- 
land thought to be by scholars, 
152. 

Delbrueck law of 1913, 157. 

Democracy, autocracy versus, 207; 



creed of new republic, 31.'; 
economic and political, 31 ; making 
world safe for, 222, 300; new, 32; 
object of Constitution to thwart, 
36; in Pars conference, 339; at 
Princeton, 52, 58; in world affairs, 
132. 

Democratic party, 31, 32; advertised 
prosperity, 192; in Baltimore, 98- 
102; Bryan's hold weakened, 75, 
76; in Cabinet, 124; free silver 
platform, 71; elements of, 411; in- 
fluences shaping policy of, 90; ma- 
chinery demoralized in Greeley 
campaign, 68; of the North and 
South, 368; organized on money 
question, 70; platform of 1916, 
183; position difficult, 112; re- 
actionary wings, 97; represents 
South, 270; sectionalism of, 62; 
in South and West with Wilson, 
182; supported Wilson measures, 
195; in West, 114; Wilson's 
weapon, 123; won by di^^sion of 
Republicans, 79. 

Democratization of universities, Wil- 
son's letter to author on, 60; social 
clubs abolished, 83. 

Denmark, 346. 

Dent, Representative, refused to 
introduce military bill, 221. 

Dernburg, Dr. Bernhard, 151. 

Derry, Professor John T., 10. 

Dewey, John, 20. 

Diaz, Porfirio, 115. 

Dodge, Cleveland H., 47, 49. 

Dodge, Kern, 259. 

Dunne forces in Illinois, 272. 

East, Congress f' ■'splayed sentiment 
of, 253; accu, . Wilson of weak- 
ness, 214; ejected to peace 
without victory, 214; machines of, 
113; income taxes of, 228; wealth 
of, 229; sec New York. 

Ebert, President, 315, 347. 

Economic affairs of world in hand 
of bankers, 158; imperialism ll.V, 
power, 121; and social order, 11; 
stake of Europe in war, 303. 



444 



INDEX 



Edmunds, George F., 282. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 37, 48. 

Egan, Maurice F., 130. 

Eighteenth Amendment, 367, 368. 

Election, British, 305; of 1916, 170; 
map of the, of 1896, 74; map of the, 
of 1912, 104; map of the, of 1916, 
194; reform in New Jersey, 91. 

Eliot, Pres.dent, 372. 

Elkins. Stephen B., 67. 

El Paso, conference at, 167. 

Embargo on sale of arms lifted, 
146; German propaganda for, 
173. 

Employer's liability, 91. 

England, believed decadent by 
scholars, 152; established blockade 
of Central Powers, 157; men in 
France, 259; "never to be for- 
given," 204. 

Espionage Act, 223. 

Farm Loan Act, 161. 
Farmer-Labour party, 420. 
Farrell, James A., 199. 
Federation of Labour, 363, 366, 367. 
Federal Farm, Loan Board, 161. 
Federal Reserve Bankng law, 140- 

41; system described, 142. 
Federal Trade Board, 142. 
Federal Trade Commission, 361. 
Filibuster, defeat of war measures 

by, 217, 219. 
Financial policy of the United 

States, 61. 
Fitzpatrick, John P., 419. 
Fiume, 338, 341, 360. 
Flood Report of 1912, 196. 
Foch, General, 317. 
Food: Administration control, 225- 

26; dictator in Germany, 202; 

shortage, appeal to farmers, on, 

225. 
Ford, Henry, 272. 
Ford, Henry Jones, 90. 
Foreign-born, map showing dis- 
tribution of, 63. 
Foreign commerce, 298; in Latin 

America and the Far East, 183; 

policy ready lor reform, ISO, 131; 



augmented by war, 158; under 

Webb law, 200. 
Foreign countries, debt of, 298. 
Fourteen Points, 245, 250, 2f?'5. 267, 

272, 275, 277, 283-84, 29-2, 294, 

306, 307, 316, 328, 334, 338, 341, 

343, 348, 394. 
France, condition of, after the war, 

303; German objective, 208, 219; 

stood for old balance of power, 

294. 
Francis, David R., 96. 
Free trade, world, 260, 285, 309. 
Freedom of seas, 309. 
French Lick Springs, conference at, 

412. 

Gallinger, Senator, 265. 

Gait, Mrs. Edith Boiling, 168. 

Garfield, Fuel Administrator, 402. 

Garfield, James A., 67. 

Garrison, Secretary, 125-26, 178. 

Gary, Judge, of New York, 184. 

Geneva, capital of League of Na- 
tions, 359. 

Gerard, James, W., 129, 175, 211-12, 
214. 

German campaign in Poland, 206; 
colonial possessions, 313; General 
Staff, and God, 207; influences 
in Missouri, 217; military sys- 
tem. 153, 154, 215; propaganda, 
151, 156, 172-73, 203, 321; re- 
sources controlled by General 
Staff, 210. 

German-Swedish elements of North- 
west, 218. 

German- American Alliance, 192. 

German-Americans, 151-57, 172-73; 
defended submarine war, 175. 

Germany: and peace, 354; called 
upon Pope to appeal for peace, 
235; declared war on Rus- 
sia, 149; did not sign treaties, 
134; mistress of Realpnlitik, 251; 
plans of, 151-52, 172, 231; 
richest Continental nation, 202; 
sent peace message to Wilson, 
211; surprised not to win war, 
201. 



INDEX 



445 



Gibbons, Cardinal. 423. 

Gilder, Richard Watson, 81, 82. 

Gillett, Speaker, 275. 

Gilraan, Daniel Coit, 21. 

Giolotti, German influence in Italy, 
318. 

Gladden, Dr. Washington, 108. 

Gladstone, William E., ideal states- 
man, 13, 17, 27. 

Glass, Carter, 140; estimate of war 
cost 227. 

Golden Rule, 135, 245, 334. 

Gompers, Samuel, 159; aid of, 217; 
friendship of, 272; opposed Wil- 
son's bills, 196. 

Gorman, Arthm- P., 73. 

Government, biu-den of, 75; coali- 
tion planned, 280-64; "Congres- 
sional," study on, 21; income 
de lined, 161; investigations of 
1912 and 1913, 103; limitations 
of powers, 32; machinery of, 66; 
Newtonian system of, 35; opposi- 
tion to practice and policy, 19; 
power to control labour, 165; 
scrutiny of, 17; underground, 88. 

Grand Fleet, 322. 

Gray, George, 167. 

Grayson. Doctor, 357. 

Great War, 332. 

Greece, 360. 

Grey, Earl, 359, 360; cordial re- 
ception by President, 360. 

Hadley, President of Yale, 41. 

Hague Conference, Second, in 1907, 
129. 

Haig, General, 209. 

Hanna, Daniel, 78. 

Hanna, Mark, 64, 66, 72. 

Hanson, Mayor Ole, 364. 

Harding, Warren G., nomination 
of, 425, 426. 427, 428, 430, 432, 
433. 

Harmon, Governor, 95, 99, 124. 

Harper, G. M., " Addresses of Wood- 
row Wilson," 128, 136. 

Harper, James H., 81. 

Harper, President William Rainey, 
47, 81. 



Harper's Weekly, 81, 94, 100. 

Harriman, Edward H., 76. 

Hart, J. S., 14. 

Harvey, Colonel George, 81-89, 
93; on "Fom-teen points," 246; 
worked for Clark, 99. 

Hay, John, 71, 313, 378. 

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 134. 

Hays, Will H., leader of Republican 
National Committee, 423. 

Hearst, William Randolph, 173; 
papers opponents of Wilson, 175; 
Republican aid, 192; friendly to 
Wilson, 293. 

Henderson, Arthur, 305 

Heney, Francis J., 190, 271. 

Henry, Professor Joseph, physicist, 
14 43. 

Hill,' David B., 73. 

Hill, General D. H., 12. 

Hindenburg, General von, 150; 
book about, 204; drive into Rus- 
sian Poland, 206; hero of Tannen- 
berg battle, 205; line, 217; re- 
treat on Somme, 222. 

Historical thought, 28; research in, 
26, 38; sectionalism, school of, 
52; History, American. 27; in- 
fluence of Wilson and of Turner 
on wTiting, 28. 

Hitchcock rcservafiors, 397. 

Hitchcock, Senator, ioS. 

Hodge, Dr. Charles, 14. 

Hohenzollern, dynasty, 215; ended, 
278. 

Hollis, Henry, 271. 

Hook, Judge, of United States Court 
of Kansas City, 165. 

Hoover, Herbert C, 225, 252, 401. 

House, Colonel Edward M., 97, 98; 
at Peace Conference. 285, 288, 
333; sent to Germany, 149; in Wil- 
son campaign, 190. 

House of Representatives, chosen, 
120. 

Houston, 125. 

Huerta, General, 116, 132. 

Hughes, Justice Charles E., cam- 
paign of, WZ: nomination of, 185, 
187; report of, 238; in West, 188- 



446 



INDEX 



89; won hostility of Johnson, 189; 

defeated, 193. 
Highes, Premier of Australia, 314. 
Hull, Morton D., 430. 
Hungary, invasion of, 206, 216; 

Roumania and, 209. 
Huntington, Collis P., 67. 
Hutton, Lawrence, 81. 

Immigrants, 500,000 per year, 109. 

Industrial America, 66; belt, 67; 
and financial influences, 75; out- 
put in 1917, 158; prosperity de- 
pendent upon foreigners, 109; 
Wilson's problem, 130. 

Industrial Workers of the World, 
364, 365. 

Industrialism, 116-17; problem of, 
136, 200. 

Income Tax law, 71, 137; changed, 
162; new, 190. 

Inglis, William. 82, 89. 94. 

Injunctions, against labour move- 
ments, 163-&4. 

Interlocking directorates, abolished, 
142. 

International system, 130; new, 267. 

Interstate Commerce Conmiission, 
143, 164. 

Ishii-Lansing Agreement, 244. 

Italy, 204; fall of, threatened, 242; 
Wilson in, 296; Wilson's appeal to 
people, 341. 

Irish, 75; influence of, 217; opinion 
of Wilson of, 293: opposition, 322; 
I.W.W.,229. 

Jackson, Andrew, 361. 

Jameson, James Franklin, 20. 

Japan, attitude of. 311; rights of, 
133, Siberia and, 236; threats of. 
243, 244. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 80, 122. 

Jenkins, William O., 406, 407. 

Joffre, General, 233. 

Johns Hopkins University, 20. 

Johnson, Alba H., 199. 

Johnson, Governor Hiram of Cali- 
fornia, 133; enemy of Hughes, 
189; regular in 1918.211. 



Johnson, Senator, 325. 
Joline, Adrian H., 51, 57. 
Jones bills of 1911-12, 117. 
Jones, David B., 49. 
Jugo-Slavs, 278, 360. 

Kahn, Julius. 260. 

Kaiser Wilhelm, of Germany, 107, 
176, 212. 347. 

Kelley, W. D., "Pig Iron," cham- 
pion of industrial system, 64. 

Kerensky. Alexander, 233, 234. 

Kiel Canal, 346. 

Kitchin, Claude, 163, 179. 189, 197, 
221, 228. 

Kluck. General von, delayed at 
Liege. 149. 

Knox. Senator, 324, 342. 

Krupp works, 202. 

Kuhnemann, Professor, 151. 

Labour, organizations, 76; British, 
306; demand for, 158; importance 
of, 159. 

Labour and Capital, 367. 

La FoUette, Senator, 78; and his 
party colleagues, 380; filibuster, 
217; in Senate, 275; supporter 
of German cause, 184. 

Land, need of, 204-205. 

Lane, Franklin K., 125, 167. 

Landsdowne, Lord, 265, 306. 

Lansing, Robert, 126. 285. 334, 355, 
375, 393, 407, 408, 409. 

Lauzanne, Stephan, 331, 344. 

Law, Bonar, 305. 

Law, International. 157; Wilson 
studied, 18, 20; learned from in- 
dustrial masters, 68. 

Laws. Federal and state, 36. 

Leadership of Wilson, 31, 36; belief 
about. 93; cause of eSiciency of 
war, 220-21, 229; of experts, 288; 
moral, 300; political, 66. 

League of Nations, 247, 310, 314; 
agreement on, 320; and the Re- 
publican party, 370, 371; consti- 
tution of, 316; deadlock, 331, 335; 
and international debt, 321; Irish 
and Germans on. 322; neutrals on. 



INDEX 



447 



334; outline of idea, 317; powers of, 
347, 349; Senate opposition to, 
324; separation of treaty from 
League, 328; and Treaty, 328- 
354; Wilson's endorsement of, 413. 

Lee, Robert E., 11. 

Lenine, government, 311, 335; and 
Trotsky, 237. 

Lever war-time act, 401. 

Lewis, Senator J. H., 272. 

Liberty motors, 238. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 80, 124, 253, 435. 

Liebknecht, Karl, 201. 

Lind, John, 132. 

Lissauer's Hassengesang, 204. 

Lloyd, George, 208, 274, 311, 330, 
340. 

Loans, War, direct from people, 
266; to other countries, 115, 131, 
305-306. 

Lodge, Senator Henry Cabot, 78, 
101, 185, 294, 323. 325, 342, 370, 
385, 386, 395, 424. 

London, world's banker before the 
war, 306. 

Longworth, Representative, 262, 
275. 

Lowden, Governor, 422. 

Lusitania sunk, 175, 208; anniver- 
sary, 345. 

Luther, Martin, 340. 

Luzatti, Italian Premier, 341. 

McAdoo, Secretary W. G., 125, 140, 

227, 228, 240, 412, 413. 
McCombs, William F., 103. 
McCormick, Cyrus, 47, 49. 
McCormick, Medill, 254, 380. 
McCormick, Vance, 190. 
McCosh, Dr. James, 14, 43. 
McKelway, St. Clair, 83. 
McKinley, William, 72; elected, 73; 

last address, 118. 
Machines, party, 36, 71, 75, 84, 88, 

96,97,113,159. 
Mackensen, von, 206, 207; in 

Bucharest, 210. 
Madero, Francisco, 110. 
Madison, James, 14. 
Malone, Dudley Field, 419. 



Malvy, 801. 

Mamifacturing, map showing in- 
come from, 65. 

Marne, battle of, 150. 

Martin, Senator, of Virginia, 97, 263. 

Marshall, John, 121. 

Masaryk, President, 277. 

Mathews, Shailer, 108. 

Maximilian, Prince, 272. 

Mayflower, 357. 

"Merwick," 54. 

Mesopotamia, colonial empire of 
Germany, 203. 

Metropolitan Magazine, anti-German, 
184. 

Mexico, 115; A. B. C. powers on, 
147; feeling toward United States 
in 1913, 129; information on, 116; 
relations with, 131, 165; Tampico 
incident, 146-47; Vera Cruy 
seized, 147. 

Meyer, Edward, 151. 

Military bill, 198; conscription, 222, 
346; propaganda, 177; service, 
196, 260. 

Mill, John Stuart, 30. 

Minor, John, 17. 

Monroe Doctrine, interpretation in 
1823, 115-18; offensive to Latin 
neighbours, 128-29; Wilson's pol- 
icy under, 131; German respect 
for, 151; and "Fourteen points," 
313; amendment to League ex- 
empting, 332, 344. 

Mooney case, 365. 

Morgan, J. P., 67; in 1895, 141; 
powerful as Kaiser, 107. 

Morgenthau, Henry, 130. 

Morley, John, 52, 351. 

Morton, J. Sterling, 70. 

Mott, John R., 167. 

Murdock, Victor, 184, 271. 

Miu-phy, boss of New York City. 
110. 

Munition, Cabinet, 260-62: embargo 
lifted, 146; exported to France, 
158; German propaganda for 
embargo, 173; making, in Berlin 
and Chemnitz districts, 202; taxes 
on, 162. 



448 



INDEX 



Nasel. Charles, 173. 

Namiir. 149. 

National Guard, 1G6, 179. 

National Security League, 179. 

Naumann, Friedrich, " Mittel- 
europa," 202. 

Navj% United States, 178, 239; 
German, surrendered, 346. 

Negroes, 64; problem of, in Chicago, 
159; vote of, 390. 

Nelson, Senator, 264. 

Neutral countries, rights of, 157, on 
League, 334. 

Neutrality of United States, 150, 
157, 171, 176, 211. 

Newberry, Truman H., 384; cam- 
paign in Michigan, 879, 380. 

New Jersey, College of, address 
at, 39; earlv history of, 42, 
43. 

New York banks, 141, 158. 

New York City, banker of United 
States, 67, 75; of world, 306; con- 
trolled credit, 106; "enemy's 
country" 71; loan to China, 
115. 

Non-Partisan League, 419. 

North, burden of taxes on, 163; com- 
plex, 109; drift of, away from 
democracy, 155; Hughes repre- 
sented, 187; industrial region, 110; 
for military service, 177; posi- 
tion of Democrats diflScult, 112; 
Republicans, 269; wealth of, 
229. 

North American Review, 81. 

North, Director, removed from Cen- 
sus Bureau, 181. 

Northclifie, Lord, 317. 

Nugent, James R., 88, 91, 92. 

O'Gorman, Tammany influence 

through, 217. 
Oliver, Senator, 78. 
O'KeUey, John T., 333. 
Okuma, Count of Japan, 243. 
Omaha World Herald, 70. 
Orlando, Premier, 308, 316. 318, 

319, 341. 
Overman, Senator, 263. 



Page, Walter H., 89, 128-30. 
Palmer, Attorney-General, 365, 403, 

404, 405, 406. 
Palmer, Benjamin Morgan, preached 
remarkable sermon of American 
history, 9; "Life and Letters of," 
9. 
Panama Canal, 117-18; tolls re- 
pealed, 134. 
Pan-Germans, 278. 

Pan-Germany, map of, after Nau- 
mann, 203. 

Pankhurst, Christabel, 333. 

Paris Conference, 133; see League of 
Nations and Treaties. 

Paris, German objective, 150; effect 
of American Senate's attitude on, 
326. 

Parker, Alton B., 76. 

Parker, Theodore, 108. 

Pasha, Eolo, 301. 

Patton, President, of Princeton, 37, 
41. 

Peace Conference, 280, 281, 297, 
298-300. 358, 361, 393; Labour 
and Capital at, 307; Wilson on, 
213. 

Peace treaty, struggle over, 358. 

Peary, Rear- Admiral, 177. 

Pendleton, George, 61. 

Penrose, Senator, 78, 110, 323. 

Pershing, Major General John J., 
in Mexico, 166; sent to France, 
237. 

Persia, 360. 

Philippines, annexation of, 75; pos- 
session of, 117, 132-33. 

Pinchon, Stephen, 283. 

Pinchot, Amos, 419. 

Poland, 319-20, 346. 

Politics, British, 13, 17; partisan, 
325; problems of, 110; science of, 
25-26, 30; studies of, 34; Wilson 
and, 28. 

Populist party, 70, 72. 

Porter, Stephen G., 397. 

Preceptorial system, 47-48, 50. 

Preparedness, programme of, 178- 
79; leadership of movement, 182. 

Presbyterian Church, elders of. 



INDEX 



449 



Bryan, 97; Wilson, 26, 97; in- 
fluence of, 12-14; ministers of, 
in Wilson and Woodrow families, 
3-9; slavery issue split, 9. 

President's Industrial Conference, 
367. 

Press, on blockade, 174; on Bullitt 
incident, 336; censorship of, 223; 
criticism, 332; dispatches of 1917, 
245; English, 216; French colonies, 
314; German, 201, 218; imperial- 
istic, 283; importance of news- 
paper, 111; on Italian address, 
341; on Lloyd George, 336; opin- 
ions of, 135, 252, 261; on Peace 
Conference, 290-92, 307-308, 311; 
poll of, 282; sectional influence of, 
262; support of League of Nations, 
315; Western and Southern opin- 
ions on war, 216; and Wilson, 
294, 348; See footnote references 
throughout. 

Prices, of commodities, 109, 362, 363. 

Prinkipo Conference, 312. 

Princeton University, atmosphere 
religious, 14; Catalogue of De- 
grees, 14; Dr. Witherspoon of, 12; 
great part of Wilson's life spent at, 
13; history of, 42-45; democratiz- 
ing of, 52, 60; endowment of, 45; 
McCosh, president of, 43; policies 
of, 50; Wilson, president of, 30, 37, 
40-41, 45; to Presidency, 80-105. 

Princetonian, The, editor of, 16. 

Proctor, William C, 55, 59, 422. 

Progressive party, 102, 128; conven- 
tion, 186-87; dilemma of, 182; 
military service, 177; obsolete, 
183-85, 396. 

Prohibition, 368. 

Prohibitionists, 368, 369. 

Propaganda, American in Germany, 
223; See German propaganda. 

Prussian ideal, 212. 

Public utilities in New Jersey, 91. 

Pyne, Moses Taylor, 49, 5G, 59. 

llaemakers, 359. 

Railway operations. Plumb plan of, 
363. 



Railways, agreed to subordinate in- 
terests, 230; Daniel Willard of, 
217, 230; government control of, 
164, 240; interests of, dominated 
Virginia, 113; lines of, 106. 

Record, George L., 84, 87. 

Red Cross, mission to Siberia, 234. 

Redfield, 125. 

Reed, Senator, 96, 258, 264. 

Reforms, great, 124-45. 

Reichstag, 201. 

Reinsch, Paul, 130. 

Republican National Committee, 
423, 424. 

Republican party, champion of 
privilege, 32; claim of leaders, 387; 
compelled government investi- 
gations, 259; complete rupture 
at Chicago convention of 1912, 
101; divided, 78, 79; industrialism 
made secure by, 61; in New Jer- 
sey senate, 91, 92; opposition 
to shipping bill, 183; platform 
opposed new world-order, 269; 
Parsons' desertion of, 430; posi- 
tions held by, 181; use of war cri- 
sis, 177, 217, 219; victory in 1918 
campaign, 275. 

Republican Progressive movement, 
84. 

Revenue, tariff for, 20. 

Rhodes, James Ford, 27. 

Robins, Raymond, 234. 

Rome, Wilson's journey to, 296, 417. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, annoimced 
new party, 102; anti-German, 184; 
approved seizure of Korea, 342; 
as Ambassador of St. James's, 417; 
attacked Administration, 255-57; 
"big stick" policy, 116; campaign 
of 1918, 271; campaign for Re- 
publican leaders, 257-58; death 
of, 421; on civil service, 181; 
declined nomination, 187; dele- 
gates unseated in Chicago con- 
vention, 101; language of, 284; 
Lodge foreign programme, 282; 
for Minister of Munitions, 259; 
message to Tribune, 399; on neu- 
trality, 150; offers army of vol- 



450 



INDEX 



unteers, 237, 254; on Panama, 
129; succeeded McKinley, 76; 
tried to save country from radical- 
ism, 78; on universal military ser- 
vice, 177; Wilson benefited by 
movement, 103; or Wilson, 250- 
76. 

Root, Elihu, 78, 101, 153, 185, 234, 
260. 

Roumania, in war, 205, 209, 360. 

Russell, Charles Edward, 234. 

Russia, Germany declared war on, 
149; Germany's plan, 203; prom- 
ises to, 204, 205; losses of, 206; 
Brest-Litovsk, 242; revolution in, 
233; second revolution, 236. 

Ryan, Thomas F., 76, 97, 98. 

Saar Valley, 317; coalfields of, 346. 

St. Louis, Exposition, speech at, 
34; Negro riots in East, 159. 

St. Mihiel, American victory at, 
268. 

Salonika, allied position at, 208. 

Schiedemann, Philip, 347. 

Scholars, opinion of, in regard to 
Germany, 152. 

SchuTZ, Carl, 154. 

Schwab, Charles M., 382. 

Science and humanities, 38. 

Sears, Louis Martin, on Jefferson's 
ideals, 309. 

Secret committee system, 17, 35. 

Sectionalism, 52, 112, 144, 195, 274, 
275. 

Self-government, proposed to world, 
213. 

Senate, asked Irish cause pressed, 
324; conference of leaders, 425; 
disagreement on Peace Confer- 
ence, 286; fight on League of Na- 
tions, 353; filibuster in, 217-19; 
partisan majorities, 275; Repub- 
lican leaders defeated Peace Con- 
ference purposes, 312; supreme 
position of, 378; task of leaders of, 
379. 

Senate Committee on Foreign Re- 
lations, 861, 870. 

Serbia, 150; attack upon, 207. 



Shantung, 338, 342, 351. 

Shantung award, 395, 400. 

Shaw, Albert, 20. 

Shaw, Bernard, 293. 

Sherman Anti-trust Law flouted, 75. 

Sherman, Senator, of Illinois, 264; 
filibuster led by, 325. 

Shipping Board, 882. 

Siberia, commission to, 234; tempta- 
tion to Japan, 236. 

Silver, free, 70, 71, 73. 

Simon, Colonial Secretary of France, 
314. 

Sims, Rear-Admiral, 239. 

Single-term platform, 170. 

Sinn Fein, government, 315; partv, 
323. 

Sinn Feiners, 359. 

Small, Albion, W., 20. 

Smith, Adam, 30. 

Smith, Arthur Howden, 98. 

Smith, Goldwin, 29. 

Smith, Hoke, 18, 264. 410. 

Smith, James, Jr., 84, 88, 89, 91, 99, 
126. 

Smith, Stanhope, 13. 

Smith, Sidney, 80. 

Smuts, General, 316. 

Socialism, 38. 

Somme, battle of the, 209. 

Sonnino, Baron, 318. 

South, churches of the, 108; con- 
gressmen endeavom-ed to control 
patronage, 181; Democrats sup- 
ported, 112; did not endorse 
woman suffrage, 113; leaders in 
Cabinet and Congress, 189; Negro 
problem, 9, 64, 113; not a unit 
on foreign policy, 113; party lines 
in election, 198; support for East- 
ern machines, 113; supported 
W^ilson, 123. 

South, Old, 5, 9, 10, 11, 42; agricul- 
tural, and socially archaic, 112; 
beliefs of them, 20; Democratic, 
64; slavery system, 68. 

South America, 129-30. 

Southern Presbyterian ChiU"cli, 
organized, 9. 

Sovereignty, question of, 27. 



INDEX 



451 



Spanish- American War, 75. 
Spartacans, in Germany, 310. 
State rights, 69. 
Steamship lines, 106. 
Steffens, Lincoln, 335. 
Stephens, Alexander, 11. 
Stettiuius, Edward R., 262. 
Steubenville Male Academy, 3. 
Stevens, Thaddeus, 398. 
Stone, Senator, 96, 217. 
Strike, threatened railway, 163. 
Strikes, wild-cat, 365, 366. 
Submarine, policy of Germans, 174, 

175,211,212,214,216. 
Sugar, producers, 159; tax on, 161. 
Sullivan, Roger, 73, 85, 99, 110. 
Supreme Court, 35, 368. 
Survey, The, on Clemenceau, 302. 
Swan, Mrs., 54. 

Taft, William H., 77; blamed for 
government shortage, 161; in 
campaign of 1918, 271; defeated 
Roosevelt in Chicago convention, 
101; League to Enforce Peace, 247; 
for League of Nations, 326; on 
Mexican policy, 116; not in Peace 
Conference, 286-87; on War La- 
bour Board, 230; tour of country, 
375; wool, sugar, meats on free 
list, 143. 

Tag, Der, 156. 

Taggart, Thomas, 76. 

Tampico, American sailors at, 146- 
47. 

Tammany Hall, 85; alliance with 
Virginia, 98; influence in filibuster 
on war measures, 217; worked for 
Clark, 99. 

Tariff, Bryan defined, 71; campaign 
against, 70; high, 61; McKinley 
advocated lower, 119; methods of 
legislation, 106; Payne- Aldrich, 
96; protective, 17, 19; reduction 
made by Wilson, 137; reform, 31, 
32; Wilson opposed. 20, 88. 

Taussig, Professor F. W., 137. 

Taxes, 17, 20; change of national 
policy, 162; to pay for war, 228. 

Tennent, WiUiam. 42. 



"The Committee of Forty-Eight," 
419. 

Thornwell, Dr. James H., aristocrat, 
champion of slavery, Presbyterian 
leader, 9; at Princeton, 14. 

Thurman, Allen G., 61. 

Tirpitz, General von, 215. 

Tolls Act of 1912, 117, 134. 

Trade, domestic, 299; free, 260, 
285, 309. 

Treaties, of 1913, 133-34; constitu- 
tional provision for, 196; "scraps 
of paper," 149; secret, 307-308, 
315, 334; undoing of secret, 246. 

Treaty, binding Greeks to Serbia, 
disregarded, 207; of Brest-Litovsk, 
236; with Colombia, 196; Hay- 
Pauncefote, 134; of Versailles, 348, 
395; League of Nations part of 
Peace, 317, 340, 344; text of. 
given to Germans, 345; terms of 
text, 346. 

Trevelyan, George Otto, Roosevelt's 
letter to, 181. 

Triple Entente, 203; promises to 
Italy, 204. 

Trotsky, 236. 

Trumbull, Lyman. 69. 

Trusts, 71; day of, 75. 

Tumulty, Joseph P., 84. 

Turkey, 203, 277, 360. 

Turner, Frederic J., 20, 27, 28. 

Twain. Mark. 81. 

U-boat 53, sent to American coast, 
192. 

Ukraine, 236. 

Ulsterites, 359. 

Underwood, Oscar, 96, 97, 99, 124. 
137. 

Underwood-Simmons Tariff law, 137. 

United States, banker of the world, 
298-99; 306; Caribbean policy, 
118; Chamber of Commerce, 107; 
commission to Siberia, 234; con- 
ditions in 1916, 170-71; demands 
of Japan on, 244; distrust of, by 
Latin- Americans, 129; disunited 
on world affairs, 281, 283, .325; 
economic leadership, 306; enters 



452 



INDEX 



war, 195-219; and European 
struggle, 160; expansion, 205; 
feared Germany, 237; as fighting 
power, 215; finance in, 61, 142; 
food organization, 227; foreign 
policy, 115; holdings in Mexico, 
115; imperialistic policy of 1898, 
132; and Monroe Doctrine, 128; 
not a democracy, 220; opposed 
blockade of powers, 157; Panama 
Canal agreement, 117; Republican 
prophecy for, 352; Wilson's plans, 
134. 

Universities, influence of, 151, 177; 
in Germany, 202. 

University Magazine, 17. 

University of Virginia, 17. 

Upton, Major General Emory, 153- 
54. 

Van Dyke, Professor, 57. 

Venizelos, Greek minister, 205. 

Verdun, German attack on, 209. 

Versailles, 344. 

Villa, General, 146, 147, 166. 

Volstead act, 309. 

Volunteer army, 237. 

Waddell, Moses, 13. 

Wages, compared with those of 
Europe, 109; strike for higher in 
Seattle, 364. 

Walker law of 1846, 137. 

Wall Street, 68. 

Walsh, Senator David, 410. 

Walsh, Frank P., 230. 

Walsh, Governor of Massachusetts, 
272. 

War, agreement of railways, 230; 
augmented foreign trade, 158; cost 
of, 227; Department on military 
service, 177; effect on foreign 
trade, 199; embargo on sale of 
arms lifted, 146; and of, 245-46 
end of, changed opinions, 283 
all Europe engaged in work, 202 
food control for, 225-26; Germany 
declared, on Russia, 149; Germany 
siu-prised not to win, 201; holy, 
151-52; imminent, 191; Japan, 



not sick of, 312; loans, 266; 
measures defeated by filibuster, 
217; message to Congress, 219; 
neutrality during great, 168; pre- 
paring for, 222; principles of in 
terms of peace, 329; purposes 
of all engaged asked, 212; threat- 
ened in 1915, 176; United States 
entered, 195-219; with waste, 
220; weapons of, 279; Wilson 
avoided, 176. 

War Labour Board, 209. 

Washington, The George, sailed, 288. 

Watterson, Colonel Henry, 85. 

Waynesville, 22. 

Wealth, distribution of, 139; social 
and political power, 129. 

Webb Law, 198, 199, 290. 

West, Andrew F., 53, 57, 58. 

West, Democratic party in, 114; 
farm workers from, drawn to 
cities, 159; Hughes in, 188-89. 

Weyl, Walter, 335. 

WTiite, Henry, 285. 

WTiite, William Allen, 184, 262, 310, 
316, 320, 328, 343. 

Whitlock, Brand, 130. 

Wickersham, George W., 282, 372. 

Willard, Daniel, 217. 

Williams, John Sharp, 324. 

W^ilmington, N. C, Wilson's home 
in 1875, 13; influence of sea at, 
13. 

Wilson, Henry L., 116, 125. 

Wilson, Joseph Ruggles, early life of, 
3-5; made home with favourite 
son, 25; Presbyterian minister, 3. 

Wilson, Woodrow: 

Early life: Augusta, home of, 6; 
born in Virginia, 98; early life 
and boyhood influences of, 
3-10; Southerner and of Scotch 
Presbyterian family, 3-23; ideal 
leader, 11; influence of tradi- 
tional history upon, 12; college 
life of, 12; student of classics 
and mathematics, 10, 15, 37, 
38; early characteristics, 13-15. 
Professional life: studied law and 
practised with Renick in At- 



INDEX 



453 



lanta, 18; wrote " Congressional 
Government," 21; belief in 
cabinet government, 21; as- 
sociate professor of history at 
Bryn Mawr, 22-24; at Wes- 
leyan University, 25; professor 
of political science at Princeton, 
25; gifted critic, leader of public 
affairs, 30; Liberal, of Glad- 
stone school, 33, 34, 52; con- 
servative statesman, 37; nat- 
lu-al leader, 38, 60; vacation 
in Bermuda, 56; on Bryan 
campaign, 71. 

Political life: candidate for presi- 
dency, 80; announcement at 
Lotos Club, New York, 82; not 
aproved by party machines, 
88; governor of New Jersey, 89; 
reform bills in New Jersey, 91; 
elected president, 103-105; 
"The New Freedom," quoted, 
107; chosen to change industrial 
life. 111; message of December, 
1919, 118; views on Cabinet, 
126; task of 1913, 128; foreign 
policy, 131, 135; "Watchful 
waiting," 132; views on leader- 
ship, of president, 136; at end of 
first administration, 145; death 
of Mrs. Wilson, 148. 

Second administration: Gompers 
and Wilson, 159; asked for ship- 
ping bill, 160; Farm Loan Act, 
160-61; railway arbitration, 
and Adamson Law, 163-64; 
policy of non-interference, 167; 
second marriage, 168-69; op- 
position of Hearst papers, 175; 
notes to Germany, 176; avoided 
war, 176; patronage, 182; at 
Shadow Lawn, 190; big busi- 
ness and labour feared, 193; 
urged corrupt practices act, 196; 
and industrial leadership, 197; 
world needed, 201; must aban- 
don neutrality, 211; speech on 
government with consent of 
governed, 213; broke with 
Germany, 215; U. S. approval, 



216; and "seven dictators," iJ17; 
war finance of, 229; purpose to 
con^^nce German people, 232; 
foundation for government 
OM-nership, 241; "Fourteen 
points," 245; opposition to, 2ol; 
plot against, 260-61; asked for 
powers for war work, 264-0^; 
internationalism of, 265; con- 
spicuous ability, 271; answer 
to Germany, 273; asked Demo- 
cratic Congress, 274; not ready 
for peace, 280; representative 
in Peace Conference, 281; and 
Clemenceau, 304; on colonial 
possessions, 313; British Lib- 
eralism support, 315; chair- 
man to draft League of Nations 
constitution, 316; believed in 
League, 329; ill in Paris, 337; 
returned to U. S., 325; meas- 
ures filibustered in Senate, 
326; compromise, 339-40; ap- 
peal to people of Italy, 341; 
price of League, 348; disap- 
pointment, 348; and world free 
trade, 352; ill health of, 357; 
fight for treaty, 360; confer- 
ence with Committee on Foreign 
Relations, 371; tour of West, 
373, 376; ideals of, 384; grievance 
against, 385, senators, protest 
against, 388; work in Paris, 391; 
opposition to, 411, talk of 
Paris, 434. 
Articles and Books: Atlantic 
Monthly, 27; Congressional 
Government, 21, 24, " 30, 35; 
"Constitutional Government of 
the United States," 34; "Divi- 
sion and Reunion," 28; The 
Forum, 33, 38, 39; "The New 
Freedom," 107; "George Wash- 
ington," 29; "The History of 
the American People," 29, 81; 
International Review, 16, 17; 
"Mere Literature," 28, 34; Nas- 
sau Literary Magazine, 16, 17; 
The New Princeton Review, 26, 
30; "An Old Master and Other 



^< 



454 



INDEX 



Essays," 34; Political Science 
Quarterly, 17. 30, 31; The 
Princetonian, 16; Princeton Uni- 
versity Bulletin, 46; Review of 
Reviews, 31, 126, 136; "The 
State, Elements of Historical 
and Practical Politics," 34; 
World's Work, 101. 
Addresses and Speeches: Chicago 
Exposition, 34; St. Louis Ex- 
positiofa, 34; Association of 
Colleges and Preparatory 
Schools of the Middle States 
and Maryland, 48; University 
of North Carolina, 11; at 
Princeton, 33; 50th anniversary 
of founding of College of New 
Jersey, 39; accepting Carnegie's 
gift to Princeton, 49; in Middle 
West, 53, 54; in Chicago, 55, 
83; in Pittsburg, 57; Virginia 
Society of New York, 82; first 
inaugural, 91, 127; at Mobile, 
131; at Philadelphia, 134; at 
Annapolis, 134-35; on Monroe 
Doctrine, 198; second inaugural, 
201, 218; to Senate in 1917, 
213; message to 65th Congress, 



219; established censorship of 
press and free speech, 2?"; 
at Washington Monument, 235:; 
to A. F. of L., 239; message to 
Congress in 1918, 240; addresses 
to Congress, 246, 266, 280; at 
Mount Vernon, 267; in New 
York, 326; to Italians, 341; 
Paris Political Science As- 
sociation, 348; to both houses, 
361, 362. 

Wither spoon. Dr. John, of Prince- 
ton, 12, 37, 43, 48. 

Woman suffrage, Democratic atti- 
tude, 112; recommended, 183. 

Women, in industry, 159. 

Wood, General Leonard A., 177, 
196, 401, 421. 

Woodrow, Dr. James, 5. 

Woodrow, Janet, 3, 4. 

Woodrow, Marion, 5. 

Woodrow, Thomas, Presbj'terian 
minister and classical scholar, 4. 

Wyman, Isaac, 58. 

Yale, 41. 

Zimmermann, Secretary of German 
foreign oflBce, 214. 



^\^^ 



\iA 



